Wireframe without hidden lines

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

Hello! Is it possible to have a display mode just like default wireframe but without displaying hidden lines? In particular, I’m doing layouts for foam trays and it’s useful to have a side view to dimension the depth. If I could make a new display mode that only showed surface edges and ignored hidden lines, I could just set the detail view to use that display mode. The alternative seems to be using make2d and that can slow down my workflow when I have a lot of these to make.

Thanks!

2

Hi Nick - try the Technical or Pen display modes - set the Display panel (Panels menu > Display) as needed for hidden lines.

-Pascal

3

Thanks pascal, pen works perfect!

4

I spoke too soon. When I go to print, any lines drawn in the pen display mode fail to draw as nice clean vectors.

I’d like to make my own make my own display mode that prints like wireframe but hides hidden lines like pen, but it looks like they have hidden settings that govern what settings are available to change in the options menu. Am I correct in that assumption?

5

Hi Nick - Right - Pen and the other related ‘technical’ based modes do no make vectors - for that you may have to resort to Make2d.

-Pascal

6

That’s fair. I figured that was the ultimate solution.

Can you add the ability of wireframe to hide hidden lines, or the ability of technical modes to make vectors to the Rhino 6 or even 7 wishlist? :slight_smile:

Thanks for your help!

7

Hi Nick -

yep, that is on the pile…

-Pascal

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8

That one particular pile must be getting very big…

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9

Hi there,
any news on that feature?
A pen / technical mode with vector output OR the ability of wireframe to not show hidden lines would be really precious. Thanks for an update!
Sandro

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10

Hi - no news on that feature at this point, no. It is on our list as item RH-11615.
FWIW, VisualARQ has a display mode that provides this feature.
wim

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11

thanks, I looked into it and to a certain extend it fulfulls my needs; however a view with the optics of “shaded” with vector output would be really great!

12

I agree, it would be v useful to be able to turn off ‘hidden lines’ in display mode>wireframe in order to then print a vector pdf without hidden lines.

My experience is that Make2D is very heavy in terms of processing power, and also the linework the Make2D command generates is pretty messy. The option to print a vector pdf from display mode>wireframe would be a v useful alternative if it was possible to turn off hidden lines.

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13

@wim Any news on this feature? Or do we still have to go with VisualARQ or Make2D in the future ?

14

Hej Jacob -
There is no new on this, no. The release target for RH-11615 is still set at “Future”.
-wim

15

I’m curious how it was maden in VisualArq?
Was it a GH realisation or some kind of C#/Python? Or even deeper by somehow using Rhino SDK?
Can anybody give a clue? Thanks.

16

I am wondering this myself. McNeel says it is a rewrite of complex code but some third-party software devs have managed to script it, I think it is worth looking in to. I am not expecting this to be a part of Rhino for many years.

17

Here is a modified version of the Technical viewport mode with invisible hidden lines. Note that Rhino will need some time to calculate the occluded lines first. The waiting could be longer than 10-20 seconds for complex scenes. The performance is also much slower on complex scenes consisting hundreds of objects, so keep that in mind.
You can change the background colour to white or any other colour according to your liking.

Technical wireframe.ini (13.5 KB)

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18

That’s good. But it still doesn’t work for vector printing. So it looks like the only way is to dive deep into Rhino SDK.