V6 improvements and what I currenty like about Rhino

Rhino Rhino for Windows
#1

Hoping the things listed below will get better for V6…

History
Make 2d
Solid tools produces bad results and the excuse is that nurbs can’t do that.
Section tools was going somewhere but stopped.
Clipping planes almost there but can’t snap to clipped geometry.
The interface with tabs not total customization compared to other programs.
Drafting can’t rely on it for larger projects though I use it, needs a parametric link to 3d objects.
Printing, been waiting for tiling since V3, I know it’s on the horizon.
Shelling, and offsetting of solids and surfs only recently been added thank you but still buggy on some simple shapes where it should work.
Meshing just keeps going in circles and still no way to store export settings.
Other modeling paradigms. Drop the elitist nurbs moniker and embrace mesh modeling and voxel modeling along with nurbs. It’s time to add these kind of modeling paradigms to Rhino to make Rhino a giant fearsome beast.
Some convolution of the interface that has settings buried deep within sub menus and drop down menus and too many mouse clicks to get to. Hopefully some weeding here.
Block editor needs a major overhaul it’s modal you can’t open it and still work in Rhino. A spread sheet control on another tab in the BM so we can really organize and use blocks that exports directly to excel and can stream to excel as well.

It’s easy for me to list shortcomings, I know McNeel is a hard working firm and very receptive and helpful.
So here’s the good…
Killer cplane use and mplanes attached to objects is awesome.
Great rendering support of many programs.
Awesome mesh repair tools and wow my molds are flawless from Rhino. Also my cutter cuts patterns and pounces are printed right out of Rhino.
Many ways to interact with rhino from Macros, GH, Python, Vbscript,.net, c#,c++
Killer polyhedra plugin
Grasshopper
Great curve and line drawing ability, along with editing, if only other programs were this good.
Awesome snaps that actually work compared to other programs
Pretty good interface to make your own customizations up to a point.
No macintosh support
Many many great plugins at affordable prices
Great support for large files and dense models that would choke other programs.
Great openGl and viewports with many modes to use to visualize your models in realtime along with fantastic analysis tools.
Robust not much crashing.
Very straight forward 2d and 3d modeling compared to other programs where it takes many more mouse clicks to do modeling operations. This is Rhino’s strength
Awesome transform tools
Great little helper things like library tab, notes, ability to work in any units.
Nice rendering tools right out of the box and good mapping and unwrapping of materials
Great filleting
Awesome amount for import and export file formats
Tech support is the best in the industry
Great great price.

I could go on about the good but that’s preaching to the choir.

RM

#2

Please don’t! Some of us use Rhino only for work where the downstream requires NURBS only, and this is what Rhino does best. There are so many different programs out there doing subdiv, mesh and voxel modelling - some of them work well with Rhino. If you are going down the organic modelling road, please follow in the footsteps of T-splines and keep it NURBS compatible.

My 2 Cents :109:

BR, Jakob

2 Likes
#3

Really have to agree with Normand on that one. One of the things that compelled me to buy Rhino was it’s laser focus on Nurbs modeling. Adding polygon and voxel tools would cloud the water and spread the development team too thin, IMO. There are already lots of programs that do those things - focus on what Rhino does best and keep making THAT better and smoother.

Having said that, maybe a push to increase interchange with other apps would be useful - like GoZ, for example. Being able to send things to and from Rhino quickly without the File->Export mouse dance would be useful.

3DCoat support in Rhino?
GoZ support in Rhino?
#4

I don’t think that this is so much of the problem - you can do a huge amount of stuff with NURBS - but rather Rhino’s current interface that is now holding it back IMO. At the beginning of this video posted in another topic, we see the kind of user interactivity and real-time preview that I always thought Rhino should have for things like extrusions, etc… Unfortunately, it simply has not evolved much over the years, in contrast to other programs.

–Mitch

#5

Hey guys try 3dcoat and I think you will be amazed, I am a die hard nurbs person too but after using this program I see why Voxels are most likely the future of 3dmodeling. Medical software is Voxel based.

One of the reasons it’s so appealing is that you can sculpt your models like digital clay and no limits to detail at micro or macro levels and there is no meshing so conversion to nurbs could be automatic. One could create say a cornice using nurbs as a base then digitally sculpt detailed expressive sculpture using voxels on top of that frame work, then combine the whole into a nurbs model again., The possibilities are endless.

This could be so wonderful if Rhino embraced Voxels as a modeling enhancement to their nurbs paradigm. Also things like branched structures like trees etc are so easy in Voxel modeling it makes Rhino a joke for that kind of modeling. Also Voxels can be used for retoplogy of meshes, though I’m not interested in that as much as Voxel modeling.

Uformia has a Voxel plugin for Rhino I’m going to try but I haven’t seen much development on it.

Of course I too don’t want McNeel’s focus to stop on nurbs but I see where nurbs and meshes fail, you really need to try Voxels and imagine the possibilities. Imagine instead of one level of detail Rhino could using voxels progress to different levels of magnification depending on which voxel branch is activated, so you could have a rough nurbs model but click on a branch or Voxel layer and that could have tons of detail, going further down the branches you could go into even molecular levels.

RM

#6

I also agree with Normand. I sometimes work in modo but only for projects that are intended solely as ‘images’ - no dimensions, no technical data, no output to fabricators, etc.

I think it’s important to keep the end product in sight. If you’re creating images - for a print or tv ad, still or animated, then sub d is of course the way to go. But if you need dimensional data and accuracy and are intending to fabricate, then sub d isn’t the program for that work.

And, as a new user, I’d hate to see Rhino evolve into a bloated ‘feature rich’ program that tries to do everything but fails at most.

#7

Sorry I have to disagree I don’t like tsplines if anything I would like to see Rhino make something more like vsrshape class a surface modeling now that would be killer. Tsplines never worked right for my needs and was just too convoluted and expensive and they sold out to autodesk so who knows how long that technology will be around. Voxels are a public domain format and can do so much more than tsplines.

And as you can see from the threads one person is already creating a mesh sculpting program that they are going to release for free that will work within Rhino and McNeel now seems interested in developing “maybe” a stronger link from Voxels to nurbs and Nurbs to Voxels hopefully.

I use 3dcoat to create manufactured items and Voxels are also suited for this it’s not just for pretty pictures that I am asking this request. I am not as interested in the mesh sculpting like Modo etc as this is not hard to implement in Rhino, rather Voxels are another beast that could open up many doors for more intensive modeling in Rhino.

RM

#8

I think drastic changes in the user interface are needed to increase efficiency in both CAD and CAM. When you think about it, most CADCAM programs look basically the same and have for like 20 or more years. The way I see it, that kind of obvious lack of innovation and original thought is killing the CADCAM industry. I think the next big breakthrough in CADCAM needs to be much better user interfaces to manage all the CADCAM data we have to deal with. The best place to start innovating and doing something truly better is finding a better user interface tool than a tree structure.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn

#9

Any ideas? This is regularly talked about but no-one seems to have any good, feasible ideas that aren’t already implemented.

#10

You will see radically new user interfaces in cloud CADCAM start ups over the next year. CADCAM companies doesn’t want to talk about their new ideas for user interfaces because of patent issues.

I’ve discussed my ideas for a much better user interface for creating and managing toolpaths in detail on LinkedIn.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn

#11

I got specific today on the CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn and hinted at something that looks like a time line in a video editor for replacing a tree structure. As far as I know this is an original idea.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn

#12

Oh. Great.

5 Likes
#13

Hey Jon, I actually looked into something basically like that and made a little animation to show it in Flash back in I think 2001.

#14

Oh. Great. (as in, ‘there goes that patent’)

#15

v6? hopefully by that time i’ll be able to give mcneel some money because i’m using their software to make some of my own… it’s only fair, you know :wink:

(oh… but let’s see some hints of grasshopper working first :smile: )

#16

Hi, James.

With live previews and other modern user interface tools I think it could work really well to plan, assemble and edit everything from parts to toolpaths. When I say live previews this is what I mean:

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn

#17

Think any CADCAM program would benefit from having a Body Bag like Gibbscam has because it saves serious time vs. relying totally on a tree user interface.

Compare what you see in the video to right clicking, hiding the part you wish to get off the screen and then having to go to the tree, find the solid part you want, and turn it on.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LInkedIn

#18

Interesting, that’s similar to how I use the layer panel in rhino already. That video looks like a clumsy implementation, but no worse than using the layer panel. A dedicated panel for parts in rhino would be interesting…

#19

Glad you found the video “interesting”.

I never found anything about the Body Bag user interface to be clumsy. I have found it to be very fast and very effective. Actually, Gibbscam has had a Body Bag for many years and I’ve never read anyone complain about it being clumsy. However, the Gibbscam Body Bag only fairly recently got decent sorting and the ability to have multiple pages. Quite a few people complained about the sorting and no multiple pages over the years. I did find those aspects to be annoying but my issues with it have been finally resolved and I now have no complaints. Haven’t read any from anyone else either.

I’ve used many CADCAM programs with Layers / Levels / Workgroups for many years and I’ve never found just having Layers / Levels / Workgroups to be as good as having both Layers and a Body Bag.

Thanks for your comments.

Jon Banquer
CADCAM Technology Leaders group on LinkedIn

#20

well I wasn’t fellating myself over the video nor the “body bag” feature, it was just an interesting video of a software feature that could be implemented and possibly useful in rhino. maybe it was the users interaction in the video that made it look clumsy. drag-and-drop has been around for years, no reason it couldn’t be implemented in a “body bag” either and it would be less clumsy than that apparent selection method.