What is the best plugin / component to export objects generated by GH to Rhino files ?
Edit
Here’s an example set :
Data to export to 3dm.gh (36.5 KB)
I have been using Elefront for years. It allows baking of dimensions, blocks and dots with all sorts of user texts, keys and values… Bake names are a big plus too: so you can bake updated geometry and don’t have to delete previously baked stuff manually. Referencing baked geometry is easy too.
Thanks @AlanTai!!!
If I was a developer at Rhino, I would include these functions into Grasshopper. I don’t like to right click on standard Grasshopper dimensions and choose which layer I want to bake to… @DavidRutten
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Hi Martin, I might need to re-formulate my question.
I want to save some geometry to separate Rhino files.
For some reason, a sub-contractor struggles with our laser cutting file because he needs to make a file for each part whereas we send him a single large table of parts.
We will also add the part name as single-stroke fonts.
I’m looking at the “Object save” component from Lunchbox right now.
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Elefront has you covered here as well. You can create linked blocks, which save out to separate files or use the export component to get out separate dwg, step files etc.
Hi Rickson,
It looks like the Lunchbox component can export GH objects directly whereas the Elefront “Export” component needs the objects to be baked and to retrieve their ID…
Correct. I wasn’t aware of the lunchbox component, i’ll have to check it out. thanks.
Oh, wait, I’m just starting to fiddle with this right now.
I thought I’d probe people who had already dealt with this kind of work to get their opinion on which is the best tool.
By the way, Human doesn’t seem to have that kind of feature, or did I miss something ?
As long as you have good control over attributes you can easily reference, then filter the ID’s to branches for batch exporting.
Like they say on their food4rhino…
All tools are designed to work with worksession files. A typical workflow would be:
- Have all your input geometry brought in by means of one or multiple worksession files.
- Reference the geometry in Grasshopper based on filters. A data tree will be created with one branch for each property.
- Process the geometry in Grasshopper and bake the new geometry in your clean and empty model.
Wow ! If I understand well, that’s a neet “trick” to reference Rhino objects in GH, and bake them back while keeping their initial IDs without creating ID conflicts ?
You might be looking for Pancake?
I have to say I’ve never tried it yet. It is installed, and it looks like it can handle exports while bypassing rhino.
yeah, Bakename is a critical part of the workflow. Reference by Bakename w/ Maintain Branches is pretty slick, but i now prefer to filter rather than maintain.
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You should use scripting components for this because you just need few lines of code to customize this tasks.
SaveAs3dm.gh (6.4 KB)
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Wow, thanks !
Now for the testing…
But this lacks layer and color data, right ?
I’m trying to use the Lunchbox component right now ; it has inputs for layer and color, but it seems to
mess them up…
Very impressive. And yet… another thread that suggests a handful of plugins (try them all!) plus a custom C# script that few are capable of modifying. In short, standard Rhino GH doesn’t have a solution for this.
Dani,
not that I think your script is bad or anything like that, but I need to generate a bunch of files, each containing a bunch of objects, with various layers.
When I feed my data, I get multiple files containing all the objects in my tree with jumbled layers…
SaveAs3dm_OSUIRE.gh (41.7 KB)
Have you tried a different Laser Cutter service? 
This is possibly due to the workflow of the software used to program the machine. It probably has to be input parts one at a time in order to be able to nest them onto the stock material which could be a half used sheet. It will have to generate tags and lead in/out paths on each part too.
It won’t be the first time someone has a £X000,000 machine with an inflexible software workflow and it won’t be the last!
Ahhhh ! Martyn… It’s not even my sub-contractor.
It’s my sub-contractor’s sub-contractor !
Yeah, some CNC machine fabricator like to bind the customers to their own software tools so that they can “modularise” them as much as they can, and sell each module for a fortune.
And the worse part is that their tools are not even as good as the free stuff…
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When you pay your sub-contractor can I suggest making individual payments for every part so they understand your pain?