What method achieves rounded type corners with FilletSrf?

[jeremy5 (Jeremy)]

@chuck

I think it probably is in V5

It is.

[chuck (Chuck Welsh)]

Great. Thanks for checking.

[lander (CAD CAM CNC)]

@chuck

testSphericalPatch

spit out my coffee
wait what

@chuck

Looks like someone made it into a real command

@chuck

I think it probably is in V5.

It’s been in v5 too? are u serious rn?

@jeremy5

@chuck

I think it probably is in V5

It is.

omg yall make me feel like amateur all these trade secret commands

@chuck

For more than 3, you have to pick them in order around the patch.

Seems like I’ve seen this before, but more than 3 wow, I can’t believe this been around so long

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Rhino’s ! _FilletSrf is very powerful, it just needs some practicing to understand its advantages over the ! _FilletEdge used by most people. The latter produces lots of errors and often fails where several surfaces meet together.

Fillets are easy in Rhino

[Steve1]

Hi, wow, …will watch carefully

worryingly eobet says other cad software do this in 10 secs, I am spending hours trying to do mine. and he admires your tenacity of doing it in Rhino, so why does he say that and mention other progs do it v easy ?

and also what viewport settings as I like to soft edged shadows.

I never have fathomed out how to make my display mode I construct in look realistic.

Steve

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Hi Steve, you can visit this topic and download a wide range of custom display modes that will make your models appear with soft shadows and environment maps.

As for the fillets, there is a great plug-in for Rhino (Chain surface fillet) that could speed-up the process and create “impossible” fillets in seconds. You can download it from here:

Filsrf_crvs2.py (41.2 KB)

FilsrfEX.py (40.1 KB)

Filleting Tangent Surfaces

For those Rhino users who use the FilletSrf command and would like the process to be a little less tedious here is a Python script that will make strings of fillets that expands FilletSrf capability when filleting tangent surfaces: FilsrfEX.py (40.1 KB) This script works the same as the filletsrf command - just pick 2 surfaces that you want to connect by a fillet. The difference is the script will continue to make all the tangent fillets connected to the first fillet until it runs out of tangen…

Here is a quick video demonstration of its capabilities. Note the “impossible” fillet at the 4:18 minute:

Chain surface fillet - Rhino's best plug-in?

[eobet]

@Steve1

worryingly eobet says other cad software do this in 10 secs

Oh, that was you? Here you go.

Fillets are easy in NX

Now, bring on the people comparing the prices between these two packages again… but I still say it could be accomplished in literally any other CAD. Rhino is at least two decades behind everyone else in this area, but we’ve already had a very long thread about this which was locked…

[encephalon]

@eobet

but we’ve already had a very long thread about this which was locked…

i assume that had nothing to do with how the people where banging heads

[davide76]

If anything, the problem in Rhino is the “fillet edge”, which does not interact correctly with the other fillets developed before, following the fillet hierarchy in this example (in fact in such cases the fillet surface is used).
In NX (Parasolid kernel) this problem does not exist, since the fillet edge is quite powerful and does not suffer from those limitations.

So, Rhino would need a more robust “fillet edge”, which is quite difficult for Rhino’s geometry engine to achieve.
An unequal comparison…

[skysurfer]

Yes, right Nx could it be faster.
But is the geometry good as much as hand made fillets?

Let me be picky and annoying.

@Rhino_Bulgaria solution has the upper fillet slightly bigger so it intersect the horizontal one. This produces a completely different patch layout that, sometimes, parametric softwares doesn’t handle correctly.

I’m sure Creo can do this in 10 second and perfect but I’m not so skilled in NX.

[3dsynergy]

Hi @Rhino_Bulgaria
Any chance you could post the 3dm file of the shape you are filleting in your video, Fillets are easy? I want to follow along and try exactly what you’re doing.

Really can’t thank you enough for these great examples also for Jim’s work he always creates top notch stuff. I still use his heightfield to mesh program he wrote years ago.
RM

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Sure, here is the 3d model which I used in a STEP file format:
Fillets are easy in Rhino.stp (16.5 KB)

Rhino 7 file with fillets:
Fillets are easy in Rhino.3dm (402.3 KB)

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Using Jim’s plug-in makes the fillets in Rhino considerably quicker, except that the two top fillets are shorter and need to be extended and trimmed by the horizontal top surface of the original model.

Fillets are easy in Rhino (part 2)

[eobet]

If the underlying filleting tech in Rhino is actually stable and it’s just the UI or UX tooling that’s missing for all these years, I honestly think that’s almost even more upsetting because that’s not only leaving money on the table but knowingly wasting all of the customer’s time for as long as they have…

[davide76]

In my humble opinion, they don’t want to invest too much time to create more convincing fillets, especially in the “fillet edge” instrument, which has remained more or less the same over time. We would need to find the key, the right algorithm… I don’t know.

The example above could be made using just a fillet edge, easily, without having to cut all those surfaces. Easier said than done.
Working on corners/edges and interactions between the various parts needs a more intelligent tool; a lot of development is needed…

[jim]

@eobet

If the underlying filleting tech in Rhino is actually stable

The Rhino FilletSrf command has been making world class fillets for 25 years.

When you get down to it a constant radius rolling ball fillet is a bridge between two surfaces. If you look at the fillets on any CAD model made by any competent CAD software each and every fillet is just connecting 2 surfaces. To make the world class fillets in Rhino, McNeel requires the user to tell the software which 2 surfaces to connect for each fillet.

@Rhino_Bulgaria

Rhino’s ! _FilletSrf is very powerful

Here is how I would make the model in your video
Fillets are easyx.3dm (640.2 KB)

[Marc (Marc Gibeault)]

@jim

The Rhino FilletSrf command has been making world class fillets for 25 years.

I can add to that…
For simple, prismatic geometry, when to too many blends are involved, “parametric” CAD like NX or SolidWorks are indeed very fast. Their libraries includes many scenarios and they best Rhino when it’s time to automatically go around problems like eliminating a face in the result, for example.
But! NURBS (which they all use) use approximations for a lot of the geometry and that can lead to problems far more important than the hassle to manually select surfaces in Rhino.
For example, every SolidWorks user encountered a case where a fillet of a specified value is needed but it won’t succeed. You have no options (besides trying Face Fillet and Variable Size Fillet, there’s a small chance those tools will succeed) but trying a smaller and smaller radius until it works, forgetting about design intent.
Or another case I often see; you model something that is symmetric. Both sides are the same. The fillet works on one side but doesn’t on the other!
Or in cases where a fillet encounters surfaces that are near-tangents. The software won’t give any results, only an error. Sorry, try again!
There are strategies to go around these problems but they take so much more time than in Rhino. You should have the face of a collegue that was fixing a kayak model for two days when I completed it in 30 minutes.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

It would be cool if your plug-in could be made to automatically remove the excess surfaces (wherever possible). This is the one thing that will make it perform relatively close to the fillet tool in other CAD programs.