Thank you!!! You save my designer life lol. I had no idea how to make a clothes pattern that my boss ask. now I solve it because of this video. Life is a series of lessons even I got a job...really.. thank you!
@Phil..great tutorials and appreciable skills to admire..!!! it will be helpful to have dedicated surface development tutorial from production quality requirements..!!! Cheers and greetings,
This is still a great vid for me. One issue I often face though is when having doubly curved surfaces as you showed, then trying to flow a regularly shaped texture along it, i.e. for it to not stretch with topology (so perhaps finding some technique to create regularly spaced topology that drapes over)
Hi Jonathan, Thank you for your comments. Many modellers use the technique of creating a second surface with a different topology purely to do the flow/orient etc which then becomes redundant after the orient process. Very often the cleanest and most efficient way of modelling a surface is at odds with the topology required for panelling/flow/orient. Another way of tackling this issue would be to look at a Grasshopper routine.
Simply Rhino - Rhino3d Video Tutorials ‘add odds with the topology required’ yes this is exactly right. Case in point with the shield example (if there wasn’t a logical way to just trim away). Then the dilemma becomes how to construct this surface and in a clean way with even topo.
Thank you for the great video so is there no other option to have a very accurate flattening for the double curve types other than increasing the tolerance for squish?
Hi, thanks for your question and positive comments. Developing or flattening a double curvature surface always involves an element of approximation. There are some third party plug-ins for Rhino that may provide a better workflow and easier to understand inputs, but underneath the hood they tend to use similar calculation methods. Hope this helps.
It was very helpful, thank you. I'm having a different problem than the one in the video. For example: When I offset a curve that I created with only three control points, many control points are formed on the curve formed with the offset. This creates some problems when editing later. Is there any way to prevent this? Thank you from far away.
Hi. When you offset a curve (or surface) in most NURBS based software including Rhino you will often generate a curve with more control points than the original. Offsetting at Rhino’s default setting is carried out to an ‘Absolute Tolerance’. If you are, for example, using a ‘Small Objects Millimetres’ template then this ‘Absolute Tolerance’ setting is 0.001mm. So, what happens when you offset is that in order to keep the offset within 0.001mm of the original curve then control points are added. In the command line options for Offset you can set a slacker tolerance for the offset (for example 0.05) which will reduce the number of points. If you want to maintain the original number of control points you can use the ‘Loose’ option from the command line. You will see that this may make the offset more inaccurate. As a compromise you could Offset at the default settings then lock the offset curve to use this as a ‘target’. Then offset with the ‘Loose’ option - you can then adjust the intermediate points of the ‘Loose’ offset to better fit the locked curve. It’s important to note that an ‘Absolute Tolerance’ is used for splitting, trimming, joining, offsetting and projecting and pulling curves amongst others.
Thanks, and you're welcome, glad you found it useful. We find that many of our customers report that the ‘Magic Mouse’ supplied by Apple with the desktop Macs is not suitable for CAD and modelling - therefore a conventional wireless two button mouse with scroll wheel may be much more useful. Hope that helps.
Hi Phil, hi Everybody, I have a question, hope someone could help me. Let's say I have modeled a simple squarish Cupboard, nothing special, just left, right, top, and bottom panels as the carcass, back panel, and the front door. I am looking for a way to layout my all panels (top view) for future manufacture, nesting, etc. I was hoping that "flatten" would be the thing but looks like not. Could someone help me, please? I know that I could face different parts in different views and then use the "make2d" command, but that would be a very slow procedure. And imagine if the model is more complex. I need a kinda faster way to bring all my panels on top view. By the way - I am using Rhino for MAC. Not many plugins from food4Rhino I can use. So basically native Rhino command is what I am expecting. Thank you!
Hi DC, Try ‘Smash’. If you have something like a 100mm solid box, shell it out to a thickness of 10mm from one face and then run ‘Smash’ then all the faces will be flattened and presented in ‘Top’ viewport. Look at the Options in the command line to fine-tune. Hope that helps - Phil.
thank you for enlightening! I read for and search for 2 days on the topic i find this video very useful. btw...15:12 it is not typing only ... Ok! there is no icon for Squish command yet but it is in the "surface menu > surface flattening"; I mentioned it because seeing commands in the categories (in this case "surface flattening") make us more conscious about what exactly we are doing and maybe help us to change our mind and choose better item from the categories based on what we need. (and btw! SquishBack and SquishInfo have no icon and no place in menus; Maybe it's better for SquishBack to be in the same category with ApplyCrv command in the curve menu ) 29:59 what is the difference between what you do and using PresreveBoundry(Yes) ?
Hi Happydrawing. In ‘Properties’ I set the object colours of the surface and curves to a custom colour (ie by object not by layer) and when I unrolled I used the ‘Keep Properties’ option - I didn’t make this clear in the video.
Hi @Phil Cook, Have a nice weekend, Thank you for your sharing, it's really helpful for me. But I have a little bit confusing, so as we know Rhino have some main flattening surface command like: Unroll Developable Surface, Unroll Surface UV, Squish Double- Curved Surface, Smash Double- Curved Surface. I understand that when we can use Unroll Developable Surfacef and Squish Double- Curved Surface command, but it not really clear with Unroll Surface UV and Smash Double- Curved Surface command, that flatten by one direction U or V, I don't know what is that commands to do ?, Can you show me what are these main function of Unroll Surface UV and Smash Double- Curved Surface command in the daily works. My job is related to furniture products, I need to use Rhino to create surface complex models and flatten it to product in metal and fabric factory. Thank you so much and respect for everything you did. From VietNam
Hi Pedro, unfortunately not - using the Shrink command would give you a smaller rectangular surface but still one with four straight sides. You could get around the issue by using two lines and two curves to create the surface and use a command like Sweep 2 or Edge Curves to build a planar surface that had two curved (rather than linear) and two straight boundaries.
Thank you - Really helpful! However...along the way I discovered something missing from Rhino 3D, and maybe you can help me find it. Why can't I connect two offset identical surfaces with a new surface? You would think that Surface>Edge Curves, or curve network, or ...? would do that, but it doesn't. Here is an example: Create a domed disk SURFACE, like that of a frisbee; then duplicate that and place it in a space parallel (or should I say offset slightly) to the first. Now, attempt to create a surface joining the two surfaces such that you would give thickness to the frisbee. Nothing I have tried under the Surface menu can accomplish this. What am I missing? Thanks again! ****EDIT**** I DO see you can select the first surface then go to Solid>Extrude surface>Straight but that creates a solid frisbee rather than a shell of the structure.
Hi, the command you are looking for is OffsetSrf with the Solid Option turned on. So, take your single surface frisbee go to the Solid Menu and run Offset and you’ll see command line input options for thickness, offset direction etc. Hope this helps.
when you begin you say you are going to create curves from iso curves but nobody ever says why you need to do this ? being a noob I do not understand why you perform some actions that are blindingly obvious to you. thank you for the videos though.
Hi Richard. I used the Iscocurve direction to help to explain how the rectangular nature of the surface behaves when it is unrolled (flat) versus the three dimensional shape. The Iscocurves themselves do not display on the flattened surface when it is unrolled and so I created curves from the Isocurves so that these can be visualised on the flattened surface. Hope this helps.
This video is an Introduction to the specific tools in Rhino related to Developing & Flattening Surfaces. From your comment it seems you are looking for a general introduction to modelling with Rhino, they are many other videos that cover that.
