ACAD & RHINO

[cfee]

Does anyone know of a good RHINO forum? We are being required to add RHINO as a new tool to our use of ACAD, and I need a little help.

Tks-

C. Fee

 

[MikeHalloran]

We have a Rhino forum here. "Robert McNeel & Associates: Rhino"

Going back and forth, there are only a few instances of strangeness, including:
- Rhino 'sees' AutoCAD surfaces, but not solids.
- You have to dimension one linear feature in Rhino so that AutoCAD will know how big the model is; otherwise it comes in at some strange scale.





Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA

 

[cfee]

Mike-
THANKS for your reply !

My bigest problem is the inconsistent work-flow path.

Using RHINO here, we've discovered that RHINO will SOMETIMES "see" the ACAD solid as a closed polysurface, but sometimes not, with no discernable pattern.

AutoCAD sees only bodies (unless you know something I'm missing), and our senior RHINO modeler, hired with RHINO-specific experience (claiming YEARS of use on the product) didn't know the difference between an open polysurface and a true solid, and had never rendered before us, even using treefrog!

We haven't had the scaling problem you mention, and we go from inches to CM to MM to FT-Inch and back & forth with no problem. HOWEVER, I will say that the interface RHINO uses to make this translation is almost completely unusable. It's almost as if they didn't know how to word the question! If we happen to guess wrong, we just re-scale the block to the correct size before exploding it to gain access to assembly components. My biggest challenge is that a given command will operate differently from use to use, sometimes not even working, and going back to the command prompt thinking it's thru. "Undoing" takes you back to the PREVIOUS command, as if the one you just ran but got no result from didn't even take place.

Consequently we have to watch each command closely, and re-investigate each model change from multiple directions before moving on to the next operation. Very cumbersome. Add to that the iffy approach to object snapping and accidentally selecting the wrong object and unintentionally dragging it... Whew!

But its a decent enuff little program, as long as you don't ask too much of it. Yes there are some amazing work examples in their galleries, but notice the LIMITED number of components in even their densest (is that a word?) assemblies. Its a flexible little surface modeler, but we are being asked to use it in our assembly modeling because of the availability of BONGO. What's your experience if any, with BONGO (their knematic animator) ?

Tks-
C. Fee

 

[MikeHalloran]

I have a copy of Rhino version 3, but for some reason I like 1.x better. I tried importing solids in 3, but it saw _nothing_, despite claims of some solids capability. Perhaps acis solids are still in development.

What I loved Rhino for was rapidly developing blank and trim patterns for large asymmetrical sheet metal parts, like 14x10x10 asymmetrical wyes with nonintersecting axes. Which I would develop, unroll, dimension, then open in AutoCAD for plotting, because I never could generate a decent drawing in Rhino, much less predict what a plot was going to look like.

Shipbuilders love it for the surfacing, I guess. I've worked with their large models of 100+ ft yachts, with decks and bulkheads, and found them much more difficult to interpret and understand in Rhino than models of similar complexity on AutoCAD.

I've never felt a need for kinematic animation that I couldn't do faster with paper dolls, so never tried it.

I know what you mean about uncertainty about what you pick, etc. I have to cycle through the "is that what you picked?" dialog a lot, and pay attention, whereas I can drive AutoCAD with my eyes closed most of the time.

It's a powerful complement to bare AutoCAD, but either of them _should_, and doesn't, do what the combination can do.



Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA