Embedded Files
This tutorial is written for Rhino 5.0 (Windows).
Created by John Greene (gree1609@umn.edu)
General Notes to Begin Tutorial:
This tutorial will take approximately 1-1.5 hours. Open the video in a separate window. There is a .pdf of the tutorial text at the bottom of the page. It is strongly recommended that you do this tutorial with two screens, one for a Rhino window and the other with the tutorial text and video.
All Rhino commands are in ITALIC CAPS, these can all be input directly into the command line in the Rhino window. Commands can also be found in toolbar icons or drop-down menus. This tutorial will use the command line.
Use the command line! If you’re looking for a certain kind of functionality, just start typing things into the command line and a drop down will appear with all commands including that word. Look and you may find just what you are looking for!
Options, layer names and other Rhino references are in quotations: “xxxxx”
Moving around the model space:
Right-click is orbit when in 3-D, hold “shift” and right-click to pan.
1) 2-D drawings
a. Create plan
i. Open Rhino5.0, choose “Large Objects: Inches”
ii. Upon opening Rhino, you will see toolbars and four viewports, “top,” “front,” “perspective,” and “right.” Double-click on “top” to enter that view, double-clicking on the viewport name will allow you to navigate between viewports. Additionally, right-clicking on the viewport name will bring up a dropdown menu with many useful options like viewport visibility styles and other options. Continue in “top” view.
iii. Start by finding the layers window: type “layer” into command line, or find icon in toolbar, then organize layers. Rhino will start with six layers: “default” and “layer 01- 05.” Rename two layers as “construction lines” and “plan.” Set the “plan” layer to an easily visible line color, we will use black. Set construction lines to another color that is easy to distinguish from the “plan” layer, we will use red. Also, set the “linetype” to dashed for the “construction lines” layer in the layers window.
iv. Draw a 12’x12’ box, this is the outer edge of the building’s footprint. Use the command RECTANGLE. Make sure you drew the curve on the “plan” layer, if you draw an object on the wrong layer, you can change its properties with the “object properties” window, type PROPERTIES. Select the object and use the window to change its properties.
v. OFFSET rectangle 8” towards the interior of the rectangle. This is the line for the interior walls. Note the options on OFFSET, distance and corner are the two most important for our operation. To change any of these options for command, click on the option in the command line and it will activate for changes or notice which letter is underlined in the options text in the command line and simply type that letter. When changing the distance of the offset, type in your desired distance (8”) into the command line and press the “enter” key or press space bar or right click, all of these actions equate to pressing the “enter” key on your keyboard.
vi. Make the door and window.
1. First, create two sublayers-door and window-under the “plan” layer by either right-clicking on the “plan” layer and selecting “new sublayer” or by clicking on the icon at the top of the layers box.
2. Here, we introduce OSNAP. Turn on “mid,” “end,” and “int” in the bottom of the rhino window. Now, draw a 36” wide door in plan on the South orientation and a 48” wide window on the East orientation. Use RECTANGLE and select 3Point by clicking on it in the command line or typing “P” after you have started the RECTANGLE command. Center both openings on their respective walls. We want to snap the midpoints on the rectangles for the openings to the midpoints of the walls in plan. Make sure you draw the lines on the corresponding layer.
b. Create front elevation
i. Select the “construction lines” layer, make sure there is a check mark next to the bold layer name, that means you are now drawing on that layer.
ii. Draw a construction line projecting the width of the plan, make it generously long. Use the command LINE, next COPY that construction line to the other corner of the South wall. Repeat for the edges of the door. Note use of “SmartTrack” here to align ends of lines with those already drawn for edges of the building.
iii. Now we will begin the front elevation. Rename one of the default layers to “front elevation.” Check the layer color in the layers window, you probably want to use the same color as your “plan” layer, but this is all personal preference about how to visually manage information in your file. Select layer “front elevation” to draw on it.
iv. Draw a square elevation 12’ x 12’ using RECTANGLE: corner to corner.
v. Now draw the roof. Draw a sloped LINE from the top corner of the South elevation, using “SmartTrack” to project the mid-point of the South elevation to whatever height you choose for the peak of the roof. Also, note the difference between drawing in “ortho” and using shift-key to snap to ortho, toggle this feature on and off at the bottom of the screen Now MIRROR that sloped line to form a peak roof. Whenever executing commands, always look to the command line to see what Rhino is prompting you to do or decide, here we need to select objects and draw a plane to mirror against.
vi. However, we want a 24” overhang (soffit) around the perimeter of our roof. First, we will draw the outer edge of the roof in plan by simply using OFFSET on the outside wall with a 24” distance. Make sure you go back to the plan layer to draw the outline of the roof.
vii. Project construction lines (LINE) for the edge of the roof down from the plan onto the elevation area. Now we want to extend the edge of the roof in elevation to the correct amount of overhang. Use the command EXTEND, and follow the instructions in the command line. Your construction lines will be your boundary objects. JOIN the mirrored slopes of the roof, OFFSET that curve 12” toward the sky, and join those two curves with line segments representing the fascia at the edge of the soffit. You can turn off the “construction lines” layer by pressing the light bulb icon to limit the clutter for a moment. TRIM the roof curve that extends past your construction lines. Now JOIN all roof curves into a “closed curve.”
viii. Draw the 8’ tall door opening using RECTANGLE: 3point. Now all we need is a door inside a frame, for this OFFSET the curve you just drew for the door 3” to the inside of the curve, this is the inner edge of your frame. However, the base of the door is now 3” above the floor level, so we need to stretch the rectangle using SCALE1D using the “midpoint” of the top of the curve as origin and “midpoint” of the bottom of the curve as first reference point, second reference point is the base of the elevation.
ix. To finish this front elevation, you can delete the horizontal line on the gable end by EXPLODE the 12’x12’ box, DELETE the line and JOIN the remaining curves.
c. Create right elevation
i. Create a layer called “right elevation.” Make your measuring line. Draw a horizontal curve with generous length from the bottom-right point of the roof in plan. ROTATE that curve at a 45degree angle to the southeast. All of your elevation construction lines will pass through this measuring line.
ii. Project all roof, opening and building mass lines horizontally from the front elevation to the measuring line. Then draw construction lines from the intersection point of the measuring line and front elevation information vertically with generous length. Now draw construction lines from the plan horizontally to the right with generous length.
iii. Draw a RECTANGLE from the top of the roof to the bottom of the fascia. Now draw a single LINE at the top of the fascia.
iv. Draw the remaining mass of the building using the construction lines and RECTANGLE. Now, all that’s left is the window. We already established that our window is 48” wide in plan, let’s use that same dimension for the height in elevation. Draw a RECTANGLE: 3Point with the top edge at the same height as the front door. For a window frame, OFFSET the rectangle 3” to the inside. Let’s do a double-hung window and put a 3” divider horizontally across the center of the window. Use RECTANGLE: 3Point and TRIM (select all of the window curves when Rhino asks for cutting objects) all unnecessary lines within the curve for the window frame. Finish by using JOIN to create three closed curves representing the glazing (glass) and frame.
2) 3-D modeling (29:05)
a. Zoom to one of the elevations, “zoom selected” is the best way to do this, type ZS. COPY: InPlace each elevation separately, and immediately GROUP the copied elevation. These copied and grouped elevations will be our “3-D reference elevations.” To zoom back out to see all the elements in the file use “zoom extents,” by typing ZE.
b. Since we’re beginning to model in 3-D, we need to enter the “Perspective” viewport.
c. Now we need to orient the plane of the 2-D drawing with its corresponding orientation on the 3-D model. We will use the feature called Gumball for this. This feature allows you to manipulate objects in model space without entering commands. Select one of the grouped elevations, you will see the Gumball interface with options to move, scale and rotate. Use Gumball to rotate the front elevation around the x-axis and the right elevation around the y-axis. This can all be done with the command ROTATE3D.
d. MOVE the elevation to the plan lines for the roof edge. Now we can start building the 3-D model.
e. Rename one of the remaining default layers to “3-D Model.” Now create sublayers under “3-D Model” for “floor,” “walls,” “roof,” “window,” “door.” It is a good idea to change the colors of the layers to visually distinguish the components of the model.
f. First make the floor; select the plan curve for the exterior wall and EXTRUDECRV. Look at the options in the command line, you want the extrusion to be a solid. Extrude the curve -8” so the top of the floor is still at z=0 as a reference level. The default view setting is “wireframe,” but in order to see surfaces of the solids you are modeling, right click on the viewport name and select “ghosted.”
g. Now make the walls; select both plan curves for the wall and EXTRUDECRV vertically and snap to the height of the peak of the roof.
h. For the roof, select the front elevation and UNGROUP. Select the closed curve for the bargeboard-that is the edge of the roof on the gable (the triangular portion of the exterior wall between the sloping edges of the roof) end of the structure. EXTRUDECRV to the edge of the roof on the right elevation.
i. Here we need to delete the wall geometry that extends beyond the roof. Type in or find the BOOLEANDIFFERENCE command. Read the prompts in the command line to delete portions of the wall using the solid geometry of the roof, make sure that DeleteInput is set to “no.” The command only deleted the intersection between the two objects so now DELETE the rest of the wall above the roof. The BOOLEAN commands are generally used to subtract, join, split, and otherwise manipulate solid objects.
j. Next we can make the door opening and assembly. First we need to change the construction plane or c-plane in order to work in reference to the corresponding elevation for the door and window. The default c-plane is an invisible horizontal plane at z=0. You will see a grid and x and y axis near the (0,0,0) point of your model space which represents your c-plane. Type in CPLANE and choose Object. This allows you to set the c-plane to any object you select. Click on the wall on the front elevation.
k. Select the curves for the door opening and frame and PROJECTTOCPLANE. Now your elevation linework is transferred to the surface of the wall.
l. UNGROUP the right elevation and repeat steps “j” and “k” for the window. When done projecting the window and door onto their respective walls, change the CPLANE back to worldtop.
m. To make an opening in the wall we need to Boolean the openings out of the walls. First, EXTRUDECRV for the door and window openings to make solids for the Boolean, extrude them to the interior of the wall surface, turning on “perp” OSNAP will help. Use BOOLEANDIFFERENCE to subtract the solids for the window and door from the walls, you should select DeleteInput=Yes. If there is any geometry left from your extrusion for the openings you can DELETE it.
n. Next, create the window and door frames. We will start with the door. First, turn off all layers except front elevation. If lines are missing, turn all layers back on and make sure objects are on their correct layers. Select the curves that you projected onto the wall and TRIM the base of the door, leaving an inverse u-shaped curve representing the frame. Now, JOIN the remaining curves. Turn all layers back on and start modeling on the “door” layer. Using the frame curve, EXTRUDECRV to a 3” thickness. Now select the door curve on the front “3D reference elevation” and EXTRUDECRV to a 1-1/2” thickness. Center the frame and door in the opening by using the ALIGN command. Select both solids for the door and frame, choose alignment type HorizontalCenter, and snap to the “midpoint” of the opening in the wall.
o. Next is the window. Select the window curves that you projected onto the wall and EXTRUDECRV to a 3” thickness. Then select the curves for the glazing on the right “3D reference elevation” and EXTRUDECRV to a 1” thickness. ALIGN VerticalCenter the glazing and frame to the “midpoint” of the opening in the wall.
3) Exploring the model
a. Rendering
i. Rhino has a built-in renderer. You can assign materials in the “Layers” window according to layer, or in “Object Properties.” If you don’t set materials to objects or layers, RhinoRender will use a white default material that can be a great base for some photoshopping, this is called a “clay model render.”
ii. You can change render properties in OPTIONS.
iii. Set location and light settings in SUN. Turn on “skylight” in addition to the sun.
iv. RENDER. There are post effects in the render window.
b. Section
i. CLIPPINGPLANE is a great option for quick rendered sections. Type the command and follow the prompts in the command line to draw a plane that will trim the visible geometry without altering any of the original geometry. FLIP will reverse the visible part of your model. Push and pull the plane with Gumball. You can HIDE the clipping plane so only your model is visible, SHOW will make it visible again.
ii. You can get some great images straight from the Rhino viewport by combining a view setting, in this case “artistic” with SCREENCAPTURETOFILE.
iii. The SECTION command will give you the cut lines of a section, you may want to use the JoinCurves option in the SECTION command to keep track of your lines. You can always EXPLODE the curves later to edit.
Once you become more comfortable in Rhino you will identify some commands that are frequently useful. You can set up keyboard shortcuts in OPTIONS under Aliases. Use and underscore followed by the command you would type into the command line.
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