Tutorials on Rhino's mesh editing abilities ominously absent!

Rhino Rhino for Windows
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Hi,
V5
I go to vimeo McNeel 94 tutorials put mesh in search it says 0 videos found.

apart from failing to find anything about setting up V5 viewports, the last article was McNeel for v4, I cannot find anything about use of Rhino for reverse engineering apart from suggestions for buying not cheap plugins, I dont have their sort of money, same price as rhino costs, as if the native tools are simply inadequate, if only I could find some tutorials on how to use the native tools, .
For a moment I thought I had found tuts but they are all dead ends.

Where has McNeel put the tutorials for using V5 on meshes ?
I so want to get started but cant find anything.

McNeel have at this address:-
https://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/reverseengineering

a pdf article describing mesh editing starting with the described way of creating two new viewports to enable this. Thats the magic ingredient I bet where other tutorials skip that and nothing they show works !

However its for v4

I cannot find such for v5.
Where is the McNeel article on getting started for v5 ?

I have choppy sea type meshes from agisoft, it takes several hours to do a dense point cloud then mesh and I cannot use my pc at all apart from internet posts as its totally hogged by power needs.
I need to curve and surface them, all these purchased progs are shown working on smooth meshes !
I need to orient mesh and cross section, snap to surface and redraw the lines and curves and judge how close a fit my surfaces are.

Regards

Steve

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@Steve1
https://www.google.com/search?q=Rhinoceros%205%20for%20reverse%20engineering

1 Like
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If you post an example of what you try to reverse engineer it’s easier to suggest solutions. I’ve once reverse engineered a huge scan of a truck using mainly Tsplines because I could use its snapping to background meshes, but depending on what you need to reverse engineer It could also be done manually by making sections of your mesh and manually reconstructing good curves.
Maybe an intermediate step before bringing them into Rhino is meshlab for reconstructing and cleaning. I’ve also had succes in the past using cloudcompare to reconstruct pointscans to usable meshes.

But what’s expensive? If it can save you many hours on a project it might just as well pay itself back in a single job

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Fred_C that took me to google where and with which I spent the last 5 hrs searching and found 0 on using McNeels built in tools as I am told can be used.

If that should have been a useful constructive link to a video then it didnt work.

I just dont have the money I have been trying to get together to buy V6 to buy a plugin to do a few mesh jobs. especially when being told rhino has enough anyway to cope.

I can’t post the meshes, they are various components of vintage bomb trolleys, also parts of a vintage fuel bowser such as wheel, dome covering filler controls, suspension, and so on. Items that are quicker to photoscan than to use draw type photogrammetry on.

It could also be done manually by making sections of your mesh and manually reconstructing good curves.
exactly what I intend to do, orient it, scale it, section it, draw it etc.

Gijs…Maybe an intermediate step before bringing them into Rhino is meshlab for reconstructing and cleaning. I’ve also had succes in the past using cloudcompare to reconstruct pointscans to usable meshes.

I have meshlab and also Blender, though both new to me, any tips like that most welcome, knowing how to do that in Meshlab requires more training, or asking folk.
Cleaning up would be good, choppy sea to smooth by taking average surface through those peaks and troughs. If you know what tool I need in meshlab do tell :slight_smile:

Steve

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@Steve1 Too bad you didn’t find anything useful. Just wanted you to see what was available.

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@Steve1 Do you want to use meshes as reference information for creating NURBS models, or do you want to modify and manipulate meshes with the end result being a mesh? My interpretation of “editing meshes” is the latter, and Rhino my not be the best tool for mesh manipulation.

If you want to uses meshes as reference information for creating NURBS models then there is little or no need to “edit meshes”. I create NURBS models of boats from dense meshes obtains using photogrammetry. The only manipulation of the meshes I do is to orient and scale the meshes using the Orient, Orient3D, Rotate and/or Move commands and Scale command, and occasionally split, trim and delete parts of the mesh. There is nothing special about using these commands with meshes. I extract the information needed for creating NURBS curves and surfaces using the Contour and Section commands, snapping to mesh vertices when creating curves using one of the curve interpolation commands.

My experience is that the process of creating NURBS models from photogrammetry meshes is dependent on the shape of the object and the use of the NURBS model. There is not a universally applicaple, simple “turn the crank” recipe, nor is it a one or two step process.

2 Likes
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Who told you so?

Btw I couldn’t figure out if this is a hobby project or if you are being paid to do the reverse engineering. If it is the latter than you will have to invest both time and money to buy and learn the proper tools or just invest a lot of time to get it done without any additional tools. It can be done in native Rhino 5 I guess but Rhino 5 nor 6 was ever made specifically for reverse engineering.

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Of course you need to know a lot about Rhino’s Mesh- and NURBS modeling if you want to reverse engineer rough scan data. But it is certainly possible with just native Rhino tools and I’ve documented that in a simple tutorial. Some of the command names changed over the past 15 years, but hopefully you’ll get some ideas from these pages: http://www.rhino3.de/design/modeling/reengineering/

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Hi,

David…Do you want to use meshes as reference information for creating NURBS models

yes that’s what I am aiming to do, not alter meshes to meshes, thats a job for Meshlab or blender.

You and I are doing the same thing, though you have had experience with it and I am still struggling with Agisoft, at least I have metashape 1.5.3 running now.
I could do with some basic help from you on settings , workflow and such things as preserving ultra high depth map requires ultra high mesh setting, I tried ultra high mesh on ultra high dense point cloud and photoscan declared 48 days remaining. lots of experimenting going on here trying to get to see detail without 7 hours processing. I am trying to create a step by step for situations where the object gets moved and walked round with camera. Alexei is helping but sometimes the language barrier proves tricky. I redo the project following more advice then it falls over due to another step or setting I wasn’t aware of !

Their forum is the place if you could visit and view the METHOD D I have for such multi chunk moved object situations or even liaise via private emails. I need to revise it in the light of new Alexei feedback now.

Gijs…Who told you so?
Clement in Working with meshes tutorials and any command to place surfaces and curves? - #6 by clement

Gijs…Btw I couldn’t figure out if this is a hobby project or if you are being paid to do the reverse engineering

Hobby at this stage, once I get to find out if its practical to take thousands of photos wait several hours denied PC use during processing, and nurbs modelling the mesh, then who know there might be payable demands on my skills. My line of work sees folk wanting but payment is difficult to get just rewards for time spent.

One invests thousands of hours learning and buying progs, yet a bricky gets more money than I do.

Jess thank you… good !! ok its vor v3 but at last a tutorial thanks but I cant see a way of downloading or anything ?
Hope to see lots of this on nurbing up a reference mesh. with V5 if poss, surprised they are scarce .
Is nurbing up a mesh reverse engineering or has that term reverse engineering led me away from where they reside ?

Fred_C I clicked that link again and this time it took me to webpages, great !!! and I see RhinoReverse for V5
http://www.simplyrhino.co.za/products/rhinoreverse.html
so I fill in the form to download and it rejects me, I need to be a company,

hey guys,…since when were rhino users denied Rhino products unless they have a website and company name.
another dead end.

Steve

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Click the links to the right starting with pointcloud

Then you’ll have to market your skills better I’d say.

That aside, you are constantly asking for tutorials but have you actually tried to just dive in and give it a go?

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Hi Steve, if you meant my page, then sorry there is nothing to download. The client was asking how I did it and agreed that I put a pictured tutorial online. The geometry I cannot share. If you have something to share then you may get concrete help.

Regarding the problems as non-professional: It can be a nightmare selling something to private clients outside of your country cause you’ll have to discharge the VAT in the clients country. Just a guess…

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try here: rhinoreverse

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Hi Fred_C click on the link at right and it s the same windows to fill in with company and website.

Jess those minute chevrons give me images of hull but nothing that I can to see how its done as a screen capture etc.

I do like to follow a tutorial rather than stab about in the dark trying to piece methods together from various sources, I just dont have the time for jigsaw learning. spent 3 weeks battling with agisoft as it is, the method to follow has been assembled from many bits of posts and so on, its taken ages to get a concise step by step and even now it fails and thats after its been edited by the developer. I sit at the pc from 10 am till midnight not moving day after day partly due to lack of concise well explained methods. Not good for my health !

My client is myself. certainly initially, and maybe always. I might see a way of selling results but unless I can get proficient they wont happen.

Steve

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That is all I could find; maybe you can contact the company. Again, good luck.