What rhino commands do you use on a regular basis and think others don't know about?

Hi Brad - see the Isolate/Unisolate commands in V6.

-Pascal

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Type between to select the midpoint between two points. I tend to combine this with the mid onsnap to select the middle of a surface. There must be a quicker way…?

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press ctl key and hover over snaps for ‘one time’ snaps…
also ctl+shift for some others (forgot they moved between from one place to other moving to 6)

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Another great Rhino feature, that some may wish to remain hidden:

  1. Go to: https://discourse.mcneel.com/
  2. Start a topic
  3. Start with “Hi @pascal
  4. Get your answer

(It’s not a reall command per OP, but I am sure it will be considered for V7)

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One hopes, at least…
-Pascal

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Ditto that. I use Jarek`s Orient on Object every day. Could not live without it now.

I think distribute might be better in Rhino 6…but I am still in Rhino 5 with t-splines and use Pascal`s Distribute script almost as much.

Very grateful to have been able to use both scripts for years now.

image

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I’m marking this topic ‘Handled’.

-Pascal

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A hidden feature that Pascal shows me in the past. If you start _DupEdge to get curves from an object, than the user can type in the command line “chain” and the auto edge selection mode is enabled.

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This feature is not hidden. Rhino documentation file: Selection commands | Rhino 3-D modeling
says: To chain-select objects

  1. Inside a command that accepts chain selection, type chain.
  2. Select first chain segment.
    ___________________________________________________________

My favorite, obscure command is CreateQuadMesh>Quadriflow. This command is associated with secret plugin which was posted on this forum by McNeel&Ass on 2018-12-04. It makes perfect, beautiful meshes.

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Perhaps he meant that it’s a non-visible “option” of the _DupEdge command?

// Rolf

There are plenty of hidden or test commands in Rhino that it would be nice to have a new command called “List test commands” to show what’s not yet fully implemented in Rhino 6 but may appear in Rhino 7.

  1. Among the commands that I use quite often is the splitting surfaces by edges. It’s pity that this option remains hidden and many people have no clue about it. It helps when a surface can’t be split by another surface or polysurface, even though they touch together perfectly. There are two ways to execute the split by surface edge command:

a) Run the regular “Split” command, then write “crv” (without the commas) and when prompted to select cutting objects simply pick the surface edges that you want.

b) Use the following command “! _Split _Pause _Curve”. I actually assigned this to the right mouse button where the original command was “! _Split _Pause _Isocurve”. Splitting by isocurve is already listed in the command prompt, so I don’t need it as a dedicated button. But splitting by surface edges saved me a lot of frustration when the basic split command fails.

You can combine splitting by surfaces and surface edges by selecting the surfaces first, and then the surface edges.

  1. (tip to Rhino 5 users) In Rhino 5 it was possible to use two different commands to isolate the selected objects with two add-ons called “Isolate object” and “Isolate selection”. One of them even remembered the isolated and other objects when saving the scene and opening it later. This is what I used as a primary isolate of objects command to isolate only a few of the models. Then, if I wanted to further isolate only one of them, I ran the other command and that was a secondary isolating of objects. Then I was able to revert to the primary isolating and show only the few objects that were isolated at the beginning. If I ended the primary isolating, the full scene was shown again. It would be nice if such functionality was implemented in Rhino 6 as well.

  2. When using the “Match surface command”, sometimes the resulting surface is flooded by a huge amount of newly created control points and spans. To avoid such over-complexity while using the “Refine match” option, I simply change the tolerance in the “Distance” box from 0.01 mm to a higher number such like 0.05 or 0.1 etc. You may notice that quite often the “Refine match” option will increase the complexity of a surface when the match is G2, but it stays simple with G1. If you wan to have G2 continuity but still keep the surface as simple as possible, remove the marking from “Refine match” and use G2. Then run the “Match surface” command again and this time turn on the “Refine match” and choose G1. This will result in something like G1.5 and should work fairly well in most situations.

  3. When using curves or surfaces to split surfaces, Rhino sometimes tends to project them improperly (even in the parallel views), thus it splits the surface in a slightly deviated area. That may produce eventual errors and even creation of a bad object. It happens when I want the new cutting line to be very close to the border of a surface, especially if they are at a very small angle. To make a perfectly accurate split and avoid errors, I temporarily increase the tolerance from “Rhino options > Units > Absolute tolerance” from 0.01 mm to 0.001 or 0.0001 mm. After I complete the splitting, I revert to the original tolerance. It would be nice if Rhino uses more accurate tolerances only for the split/cut commands, while keeping the absolute tolerance for the other commands at their default.

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Setting the distance tolerance in MatchSrf to larger than the absolute tolerance in Document Properties can lead to problems in joining the surfaces along the “matched” edges and other difficulties.

Hi, I forgot to mention that I use the larger tolerance to limit the amount of newly added control points to the matched surface, because that gives me an easier way to manually adjust them with the UVN tool. Working with fewer control points is essential to not end up with overly-complex surface that’s difficult and slow to modify. By using simpler surface I can achieve almost class-A surface quality while “CurvatureAnalysis” or “Zebra” are turned on. I also manually add extra rows of control points where I decide they are needed with the “Point edit > Insert knot” tool. Once I’m satisfied with the result, I run the Match surface again to finalize the surface, but this time I set the native absolute tolerance.

Cheers,

Bobi

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Isolate / Unisolate are new in v6, and were much needed.

MergeFace, MergeAllCoplanar, and MergeAllFaces are all awesome. I use them even to test for planarity, not just to simplify the faces of a model.

There’s dozens of others - ExtractSrf, the CPlane commands, knowing how to use the ExtrudeSrf options to maximum effect, etc. but I imagine those aren’t that unknown.

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There is no such command.

Sorry, that’s an option within MergeFace. MergeFace and MergeAllFaces are the two commands. I mis-spoke.

Not exactly a command, but the ability to use matcaps as shading mode. They look nice, and as they don’t need any lighting calculations the mode usually runs a lot faster then the standard 2 or 3-point light.
Also related:

  • showing locked objects as transparent.
  • overriding all surface edge colors - e.g. here black instead of the layer color

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My favorite commands are

  • OneView (but you can also do this trick: while being in perspective viewport orbit with RMB, then while still holding it press Shift+Ctrl and let go of RMB. This will lock to a parallel viewport. Undo by otherway around),
  • SetPt,
  • MoveUVN, especially with SelU and SelV.
  • ViewCaptureToFile is gorgeous.
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Cage edit to deform surfaces-solids

Bug : the yellow lines remain as modified after canceling an deselecting all :confused: