Every Rhino user has his or her own favourite set of tools and modeling techniques, but in my opinion the following tools and improvements should be the most urgent priority for future Rhino releases:
-
Match surface. Free-form surfacing is crucial part of Rhino and robust match surface capabilities are a must.
1-1. Make it possible to combine “Position”, “Tangency” and “Curvature” when using “Match up to four surface edges”. Currently, only one of these could be used for all edges, which is a huge limitation.
1-2. Allow partial match of surface edge based on user-selected region (a percentage length of the surface edge) or by selecting certain surface control points (pictured below). In many occasions the modeler needs to match only a portion of the surface edge while keeping the rest of it intact. Product design will benefit from this functionality. I already posted that request two months ago in another thread…
1-3. Surface match influence. With other words, allow user-defined mix between “Tangent” and “Curvature” so that the surface match is being something in-between both types. Could be also useful for creating crease lines, if the start of the surface edge has “G1 and G2 influence = 100%” and the end of the surface edge has “G1 and G2 influence = 0%”. This command will work best if it allows the user to divide (not actual edge splitting) the surface edge into sections (such like 2, 3, 4, 5 etc) and set custom influence parameters to each of them. By default, it could have only two sections (start and end), and extra ones could be added by the user at any time during the command. Using 4 regions and making regions 1 and 2 same (lets say G2 influence 100%), and 3 and 4 same (G2 influence 0), will ensure that both the start and the end of the surface edge have equal matching parameters. Example of that with a surface edge divided into 5 adjustable regions (start, end and 3 inner regions). Note that the middle region is optional for greater control over the shape, and would not exist if there were just 4 regions:
1-4. Match with draft angle. This is very important for cast or vacuum formed products where the recommended split line of the mould must be about 2 degrees or more.
1-5. Show the maximum deviation or a warning for critical areas where the matched surface edge(s) go too far from the target edge(s) (similar to what the “Maximum deviation” in “Rebuild surface” does).
2-1. Add “Match target isocurve direction”, similar to what of the option of the same name does in the “Match surface” tool.
2-2. Ability to pick individual Blend surface handle and match it to the same direction as the edge of the target surface. Example:
2-3. Visible “Planar sections” handle that could be adjusted at any given moment via manual manipulation (with the mouse pointer or the Gumball) or by user-defined angle of rotation. The current implementation requires turning off the “Planar sections” option upon every time of changing its direction. This will not allow for a clear and direct visual comparison between different directions for the “Planar sections”.
2-4. Sometimes “Blend surface” behaves in a strange way and adds considerably more control points for the same resulting shape compared to its predecessor in Rhino 5. Turning off the “Interior shapes” reduces the amount of control points, but the tool fails to properly blend the surface, unlike “Blend surface” in Rhino 5.
The green letters seem to be bold version and look especially good.