Rhinoceros Report

Friday, 11 April 2008

Guest editor: Gijs de Zwart

Gijs de Zwart is a landmark as it comes to Rhino visualisation, therefore I am very proud to announce that he will be guest editor at this blog. Furthermore he will co-operate with the RhinoCentre as a visualisation specialist offering several services.

For more info about the Studio Quality Rendering Tutorial, click on the picture

Most people know Gijs from his Studio Quality Rendering Tutorial for Flamingo he made a few years ago. Since then he developed himself into rendering with V-Ray for Rhino and has a good relation with ASGVIS as a beta tester. ASGVIS is the company behind V-Ray for Rhino.

V-Ray image by Gijs de Zwart

Being a specialist in visualisation he will share some of his experiences and knowledge at this blog. Furthermore he will offer visualisation class training at RhinoCentre in the near future.
Please take a look at his company website, StudioGijs, if you like to know more about his competences.

Friday, 21 March 2008

Explicit History Plugin for visual scripting

Click on the screenshot to see a demo I made
(play with it yourself and download the demo files below)

Most designers have a visual perception of the world, which makes Rhino a superb tool to present and visualise ideas and designs. Furthermore the user interface of Rhino is quite visual oriented if you compare it to older CAD software.
One feature of Rhino though isn't visual at all, it's called scripting. To make use of scripts, you have to write a program (code) which can be executed in order to generate geometry in Rhino.
Why script? With these 'little' and 'custom' programs designers make clever use of Rhino in order to make fast design variations, or create smart repetitive design elements. Another application of scripting is to solve technical features based on parameters which influence the form, position or orientation of geometry.

Rhino facade script for UN Studio's Light*house Aarhus Harbor Front
Image courtesy 3XN and UNStudio

Leading architects, for example, use scripts more and more to be able to design stunning and functional architecture. This is quite an achievement as they have to switch to another mindset in order to program their scripts instead of modeling surfaces straight away.
David Rutten of McNeel & Associates, the company behind Rhino, developed a new way to create scripts for Rhino on a visual basis. After David created the Monkey Script Editor to make scripting for Rhino more easy, he created the Explicit History Plug In which brings scripting to designers even better!

If this plugin doesn't make you script, you probably never will!

As the Explicit History Plugin is full under development you can try it out for free and help David to develop it even better. Read more and download a free work in progress version to try it out yourself:

Explicit History Wiki Pages, for plugin download and to see how it works
Download the files from the demo to try out yourself
small You Tube movie examples
rhino newsgroup to join the club
Live Architecture Blog; parametrics in Architecture with an article about explicit history

Monday, 14 January 2008

Tolerance Settings in Rhino; a little survey

What's really the influence of tolerance settings when modeling in Rhino?

For investigation I took the default 10 meter long sailboat hull from the Rhinomarine hull modeling module. This is a very clean hull with only few control points as you can see yourself.
The filesize of this hull is 60 kb with Save Small (without render meshes).

Certain operations in Rhino depend on the user tolerance. Examples of geometry build to tolerance are: intersections between two surfaces, section curves, offset curves and surfaces, curves projected onto surfaces. These types of geometry are constructed by refinement methods that stop refining when it is within tolerance. Many other operations build geometry to a much greater accuracy. For instance the intersection of 2 lines that are on the same plane will be much more accurate (thank you Jim).
To find and change the tolerance settings open the menu: File/ Properties/ Units. Default values for large objects can be:
- Units: Millimeters
- Absolute Tolerance: 0.01 units (mm)

Then I created two sections:
1- Tolerance set to 1.00 mm. resulted in the red line based on 14 control points
2- Tolerance set to 0.01 mm. resulted in the blue line based on 226 control points
The maximum deviation between the two curves is 0.168406 mm. Find this command under menu: Analye/ Curve/ Deviation

Next I saved each curve including the hull into two separate files which resulted in:
1- 61 kb file for the 1.00 mm. tolerance curve + hull
2- 68 kb file for the 0.01 mm. tolerance curve + hull
The difference in filesize is 10% (Save Small).

After making a frame surface based on the section the difference in filesize is:
1- 66 kb for a single frame surface (+ hull) based on the 1.00 mm. tolerance
2- 103 kb for a single frame surface (+ hull) based on the 0.01 mm. tolerance
The difference increases to 36%.

At last a solid frame is made with a certain thickness which increases the filesize even more:
1- 80 kb for a single solid frame and hull (1.00 mm. tolerance).
2- 174 kb for a single solid frame and hull (0.01 mm. tolerance).
Resulting in a more than 2 times bigger file for the 0.01 mm. tolerance frame.

Why not model in centimeter or meters?
This is worth considering but as millimeters is the standard in a lot of industries, most people think in mill and AutoCAD drawings are also often in mm. Even with large products like ships and architecture I found out it is confusing to start modeling in meters and scale Acad drawings for input over and over again.

My conclusions are:
- tolerance settings can have a big impact to file size
- the impact gets bigger if 3d models are detailed up to solids
- deviation between the two analysed situations is a very little 0.168406 mm

Recommendation:
- depending on manufacturing techniques and accuracies, 0.5 or 1mm. absolute tolerance seems to be worth to consider with large and detailed 3d models such as ships, yachts and architecture

Some related commands:
- Rebuild; investigate the amount of control points and rebuild curves with less control points
- FitCrv; fit a curve to certain tolerance to the original object
- CrvDeviation; to measure the maximum deviation between two curves

You can download the file yourself over here

Tuesday, 8 January 2008

Rhino Math; a little secret

For those interesting in geometry based on mathematics, this little plug in does the job.
Jess Maertterer developed it years ago and fortunately he shares it for free via his website.

Architectural application of this plug in is very interesting as several Universities have shown nice examples of geometry created with Rhino Math.

With this plug in you can create curves and surfaces based on mathematics, like x ^ y and x + y, but also Sin/Cos and Tan are covered. Furthermore the plug in offers a library with basic examples.

Download the plug in over here: http://www.rhino3.de/_develop/__v3_plugins/math/

For me it was a splendid solution to create hyperbolic golden ratio vortexes for my Schauberger research. This resulted in a design of a flying saucer based on cold fusion physics.

Ifo - identified flying object

Friday, 23 November 2007

T-Splines modeling

A new plug-in for Rhino is the T-Splines modeling tool. New modeling techiques with T-Splines offer new ways to design your products.
Modeling in Rhino is based on positioning control points to create curves or surfaces. The Rhinoceros NURBS use a proportional array of control points in U and V direction to create surfaces.

One disadvantage of the proportional array is that the desired shape sometimes need more control points in a specific region. If you for example model a car, some parts of the surfaces are more flat than others.

.......................NURBS......................................T-Splines

As you can see, the distribution is different with T-Splines and offers better control.

Download an evaluation version at http://www.t-splines.com/ ,or watch the video first.

Sunday, 10 June 2007

In memoriam of Robert Schutz

Robert,
it is so strange that you are not there anymore. Your enthusiasm and generosity was so inspiring to me and to the Rhino community. People like you are essential to the success of Rhino and I hope (and think) you were happy being one of the pioneers in the history of Rhino. We had a lot of contact and you were always thinking about new opportunities, only few know how innovative you were. You inspired me with your excellent Rhinoceros blog to create this blog.

My condolences to Robert's relatives, McNeel company and the Rhino community with this big loss.

Like you said:
'Auf wiedersehen'

(German for: see you later)

Gerard Petersen
RhinoCentre
Netherlands

Monday, 21 May 2007

Display Faces and Naked edges

Blue backfaces and magenta naked edges

Important for high quality modeling in Rhino is the direction of surfaces and naked edges. The direction of a surface should be outwards of the model to calculate volumes properly. Furthermore it is important to see which edges of the model are naked for nice renderings and to make your model watertight for molds and volume calculations.
In Rhino 4 it is easy to create new displays and I made one for face direction and naked edge analysis. In the screenshot above you see that backfaces are blue and naked edges magenta.

How can you use this advanced display?

dowload this FacesEdges.ini file
watch the instructional video and make it work

Thursday, 10 May 2007

Choices

First sketch

3d model in Rhino

Kenau product development with Rhinoceros

This morning someone phoned me up and wanted to know more about the applicability of Rhino in the marine industry. Why should you chose for Rhino?

For me it was a few years ago a surprise to find a design tool which made it possible to design instead of handling a computer program. Rhinoceros was able to follow instantly the fantasy in my mind and showed the result directly in 3d on the screen. Wow, I had never experienced that before!

That enthusiasm was my drive to find solutions in Rhino for every need I had whether it was design, engineering or the production of my ideas. In Rhino 3.0 it used to be a challenge to make 2d drawings and it is a strange feeling to remember that I had to make a difficult offset of a freeform surface in Rhino 2.0 which is a press on the button nowadays.

Please ask yourself if you look for limitations when you consider Rhino or do you think in opportunities? One advantage of using Rhino is the opportunity to contact developers directly with your needs and be able to influence the development of Rhino directly! Another opportunity is to innovate your design and production processes and make them more efficient!

Time for Action:

One last comment is that a lot of people, myself included, often think in 'or' instead of 'and'. Maybe Rhinoceros can be complementary to your existing design or production process including the software you use. Please tell me if you think Rhino is too expensive for that.

Tuesday, 8 May 2007

Cradle to Cradle

Nike Considered design based on Cradle to Cradle philosophy

Most of the products we design nowadays end up in a landfill. Call this cradle to grave and it results in ecological tragedies like pollution and waste. Why not design like nature from cradle to cradle and use our waste as food for new products? This design method is described by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their inspiring book Cradle to Cradle.

They found out that that a healthy design approach can be highly profitable for your environment and your wallet. Ford Motor Company and Nike for example had good success with this approach.

I am very inspired by this methodology and I hope that I will use Rhino in the future to create 100% healthy products instead of less bad. I am interested to see examples of products designed with Rhino by the Cradle to Cradle approach.

Want to know more?

Cradle to Cradle book
Cradle to Cradle Community
Wikipedia explanation
50 minutes Dutch documentary of the VPRO public broadcasting corporation

Friday, 4 May 2007

Kenau Animation

This is an animation I made with Rhino/ Penguin/ Bongo blending in a photograph with Adobe Premiere Elements. When a 3d model is available it takes little effort to create multi media product presentations yourself. You can also contact me to do it for you.

See more about the Kenau motorboat over here:
- Development process: http://www.scheepsbouwkunst.nl/
- Product website: http://www.kenau.nl/
.

Thursday, 3 May 2007

Kings of Fairing

Superstructure of a yacht Abeking & Rasmussen GmbH by NCG

Stern with integrated stairway of a luxuary yacht De Vries Scheepsbouw by NCG

Yesterday I visited Numeriek Centrum Groningen (NCG) which develops and markets the successful NUPAS-CADMATIC 3D software solution for the international shipbuilding industry. In addition, the company renders services to shipyards and engineering offices in the form of hull shape fairing, complex surface modeling and shell plate development.

What has Rhinoceros to do with that? Well they use Rhino more and more to import all kinds of file formats delivered by designers and shipyards and convert them properly to import as IGES in their specialistic fairing software called NAPA. These experts in fairing do excellent jobs as you can see in the pictures.
Their workflow is as follows:

Import surfaces or curves in NAPA often by using Rhino
Create an exact 3d model with extreme quality of fairing with NAPA
Present details and pictures of the model with Rhino for evaluation purpose.

My impression of NAPA was that it is specialistic software with an older generation user interface and Rhino complements its lack of presentation tools. The 3d IGES model of the hull and superstructure from NAPA is the basis for engineering with NUPAS software and Rhino IGES models can also be imported in NUPAS.
As Rhino is capable to produce high quality fair surfaces itself, designers should be able to design completely with Rhino and export to NUPAS for engineering.

See for more information:

Consult NCG for challenging fairing issues or more information about NUPAS.

Tuesday, 1 May 2007

Rhino to Google Earth Tutorial

Learn to import Rhino models into Google Earth with a tutorial I wrote:
http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/FlevoDam.html
This is a great tool for big Architecture projects where the environment is important.
Subjects in this tutorial:

Scale a Google Earth picture properly in Rhino
Model your building or other 3d object on top of it
Learn to position at the desired location and orientation in Google Earth
Create a tour and fly along a path in Google Earth

Have fun!

Monday, 30 April 2007

Architects User Meeting NLARCH2007

May 31th 2007 will be a special day for Rhino users in Architecture.

Bureaus like UN Studio, Mecanoo, Architekten Cie, Benthem Crouwel, Octatube and Arup show their latest designs with Rhino. RhinoCentre is partner in the organisation of the event.

More information at http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/NLArch2007.html

Mecanoo will present their winning design for the new National Performing Arts Centre in Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s most prestigious project. This theatre is completely designed with Rhinoceros.
See for more information: http://www.mecanoo.com/
Or You Tube movies: www.youtube.com/mecsbo