Introduction

Before we even start modeling we need Autocad plans of a house. I’ve taken dwg files and saved it as 3dm (native Rhino file format).  You can download it here:

plans

If you like, or if you get stuck with some step, you can download each step individually here:

step 1

step 2

step 3

step 4

step 5

step 6

final

STEP 1

Ok, in this first step we will be setting up our plans in 3D space. Actually we will align each view plan to our viewport in Rhino. But first, we need to group all the lines from each view and put them in a separate layer. Just so we don’t get big pile of curves in one layer, that way we wouldn’t be able to control anything. Organizing in layers is always a great idea because we can easily hide whole layer or lock it.

Ok, so lets start. First create a new layer named Plans and move all other layouts (except Default) inside Plans layers.

You should have your layers setup like this

Now we need separate layers for our views. We need 4 side views and one top. So go on and create new layers (top, front, left, right, back).You should have something like on the image 2.

image 2

Next thing to do is to group each view and put the lines in its layers accordingly.

image 3

image 4

We need to orient our blueprints so they fit in every viewport in Rhino, right now they are all oriented the same way visible in Top view. We will be using RemapCPlane command to do this, so we don’t have to rotate, Rhino can do that for us. So, lets start with Front view. To do so, click on the Front group of curves (or layer) from Top viewport and run RemapCPlane and click anywhere inside front viewport. You should get the same situation like on image 5 below.

image 5

Using Move tool and with help of Osnap (End option would be enough, but just to be sure you can check Intersection too. Near could be a little confusing) we will position our front layer in right place according to our top layer (check image 6).

image 6

We will do this same step for all other views, so we get a “house” made of plans. Sort of. Note: when using RemapCPlane for other views (groups of curves) make sure you use the right viewport and cplane. For example, if you want to remap back layer you will have to select it, run the RemapCPlane and click anywhere on Back viewport. Since Back (or left) viewport is not active by default, you can click on any of 4 viewport names with right mouse button, then Set View, and there you can choose which viewport to use. Just remember, For back group of curves you need back viewport, for right group of curves you need right viewport, and the same applies for left, front and even top.

I don’t think this should be very hard to setup, and once you do, you will have something like on the image 7 below.

And note the orientation of the letters above groups. That should give you pretty good idea of how well you did to recreate this.

image 7

RESOURCES

STEP 1

We will start from the bottom up. So, first we will model the bottom plate. Create two circles from the top viewport, one 11.9cm in diameter (if you see a diameter option in Circle command, click it so it turns into Radius – that means the diameter is on) and other 11.5cm.

Then we will need three more circles (you can make them anywhere, just make them concentric). Make them 0.3cm, 0.6cm and 0.8cm in diameter.

Now, using Mid, Quad and Cen options in Osnap, position these three little circles on the End (or Quad) point on the outer bigger circle. And move those three from right to left by 0.85cm.

Now we need three more groups of those 3 circles. So, we will use Arraypolar, and array them 4 times around the center of bigger circles (in my case that is 0,0 as I usually have my models in the origin).

Now, select the inner circle of two big, and outer circles of each three-group circles and move those circles up by 0.25cm (from front viewport):

Now, select and copy the inner circle of two bigger, and move it up by 0.55cm

Now, copy the outer circle, and move it up by 0.8cm:

Now, back to those 3-group smaller circles. Select the inner one (4 of them) and move up by 0.75cm. Then, copy those moved circles, and move the copied ones up by 0.2cm.

Now, pick one group of circles, and we’ll start making the boss. Create a surface between two smallest circles. I used extrude, but you can use Loft as well.

Now, the bottom one, I’ve extruded it to the bottom small circle (here, if you want to use loft, you need one more circle that is in the same construction plane as the bottom smaller circle).

And then, extrude the biggest circle to the upper small circle:

Now, we need to create the surfaces between inner and outer circles. We’ll do that with PlanarSrf.

Join those surfaces, and ArrayPolar like we did for the circles.

Now, we’ll make the bottom surface, so select outer circle, and 4 little ones and using PlanarSrf make a surface with 4 holes (just run PlanarSrf command and hit enter):

Repeat the same step for upper 5 circles:

Now, using the Loft command, make a surface out of outer circles (Use the straight sections in style option) :

Join those surfaces, and we’re done with the plate.Theres just one thing to do, that is fillet the edge. So, using FilletEdge and 0.1cm as radius, fillet the shown edge:

You can download this tutorial in PDF format here.

Organic Modeling for Jewelry Design with T-Splines and Rhino® 4

Designing a Ring

Juan Santocono

Industrial Design

Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentine

Matt Sederberg

T-Splines, Inc.

© Copyright 2008 T-Splines, Inc.

Designing freeform objects can be difficult when working with traditional CAD software. T-Splines and Rhino 4 offer an easy way to create smooth, gap-free organic models for jewelry design.

The best way to read this tutorial about how to model a ring using T-Splines is by looking at the 3D model at the same time. You can follow the model’s progress by selecting the differ­ents layers in the file. The model can be downloaded at www.tsplines.com.

In this tutorial, anything in Blue is a Rhino command, while anything in Red is a T-Splines command. Type these commands in the command line of Rhino to run them.

STEP 1 – WIREFRAME

Ring Profile
First, draw the main profile of the ring using Curve. For me, the best way to get the right pro­file is by designing it undeveloped.

This particular design consists of two hearts connected by the body of the ring. The idea is to have a smooth transition between the body and the hearts, with no sharp edges.

STEP 2 – WIREFRAME

Control Polygon
Use ExtractControlPolygon to extract the control polygons of the curves.

In step 5, we will use this control poly­gon to generate a T-Splines surface with the same profile of the native curves.

STEP 3 – WIREFRAME

Inner Lines
Once we have the control polygon profile, we need to connect the points.Remember that the ideal thing is to have rectangular regions (keep that rule of thumb in mind when you draw the curves.)

Each line intersection will determine where the control points will be on the surface.

STEP 4 – WIREFRAME

Extrude Lines
Now we need to extrude these lines with tsScriptExtrudeControlPolygon (Thanks JB and T-Splines for this amazing tool!) in order to get a 3D control polygon.

Remember to delete all the internal lines after extruding. These inner lines are not necessary for the tsControlPolygonToSrf command (next step).

STEP5 – T-SPLINES SURFACE

Transform to T-Splines Surface
Before generating the T-Splines sur­face, we need to be sure that we only have the lines we need; for this, I usu­ally use: first, ungroup all, then split selected curves against each other (tsSplitCurves), select duplicate curves (SelDup) and Delete them.

Now the curves are ready to be trans­formed to a T-Splines surface.

Select all lines and enter the tsControl­PolygonToSrf command.

Check the preview option to ensure the surface is correct. Now we have a T-Splines surface.

STEP 6 – T-SPLINES MODIFICATION

Body Profile
To get the desired body profile, we need to make some changes by moving control points of the T-Spline surface using tsManip.

First, scale -X (in the negative “X” direction) the twelve selected points shown on the screen­shot. Scaling points is a way of moving them symmetrically.

Second, move these same points -Z in order to get a smoother curvature on the outside part of the ring body.

STEP 7 – T-SPLINES MODIFICATION

Face Extrude
For the ring design we need a flat face on the inner part of the ring body that will touch the finger.

One way to do it is by extruding faces. With tsExtrude, select the faces to be extruded, in this case all the ones that comprise the inner body. Do not select faces that touch a star point, this will result in the addition of control points that we don’t want right now.

The extrusion must be very small to get a small radius transition to a flat surface. In this case, 0.3 mm.

After we extrude these faces and exit the command, points associated with the extruded faces will remain selected. Scale these points to get the flat surface closer to the ends of the hearts in a smoother transition.

It’s important to pay a lot of attention to how the T-Splines surface react to these control points movements in order to understand it and use it on future projects.

STEP 8 – T-SPLINES MODIFICATION

Heart Modification
The idea of the design is that the two hearts are thinner on the interior tip and thicker on the body. To achieve this we just need to select the control points on the parts of the hearts shown and scale them -Z. (Scale the points of both hearts at once to ensure a symmetrical scaling).

Next, unselect the outermost loop of con­trol points and repeat the -Z scale. Do this with every loop of points (shown below).

Now we have the final shape of the un­folded ring.

STEP 9 – ADJUSTMENTS

Curvature Analysis
One way to know if our surface has the correct curvature and smoothness is with the CurvatureAnalysis tool.

For example, here I used the Gaussian Style to see clearly which surfaces have a negative (blue) and positive (red) radius.

I detected a surface area where the curva­ture changes from negative to positive in an unintended location, which breaks the smoothness.

I selected the control points that affect that area and scaled them (-X) to smooth the surface.

Notice that you can manipulate the surface while keeping the analysis on, this gives immediate feedback.

Once the curvature is fixed, the T-Splines surface is done

STEP 10 – SURFACE CONVERSION

Set Smoothness
Once we are satisfied with our design, we transform our T-Splines surface to NURBS surfaces. We need to do this because for the next steps we will use some Rhino tools that only work on NURBS, not T-Splines.

Before converting to NURBS, use the tsSetStarSmoothness command to smooth the surface at star points. I used a smoothing value of 5.

Transform
Next, use the tsConvertToRhinosurf command to turn the T-Spline into a NURBS surface.

STEP 11 – BODY INSCRIPTION

Preparing Surfaces
You can add some inscriptions on the ob­ject in many different ways (e.g. Boolean operations). In this case I prefer to do it by managing surfaces instead of “solids.” This way I have more control at each part of the procces, and also have less geometry to manage, which results in faster opera­tions.

First, Explode the NURBS surface and Hide all the surfaces except the one we need (see the screenshot).

Follow this process:

1-Create a solid TextObject.

2-Fillet the text.

3-Scale the text to fit it on the surface (tsManip).

4-Trim the letters’ surfaces and then Join them all together.

5-Fillet the text with the ring.

6-Ones we have all the letters filleted, Unhide and Join all the surfaces together to yield a closed polysurface, like we had before the inscriptions.

STEP 12 – FINAL TRANSFORMATION

Flow Along Surface
Finally, we need to deform the undeveloped ring surface to get a circular ring. For this, we will use the UDT Rhino tool FlowAlongSurface.

First, draw an arc that represents the side ring profile, extrude it using ExtrudeCrv (the distance will be the width of the ring) and finally unroll it (UnrollSrf) to get the base surface needed for the UDT operation.

Now that we have got all the sur­faces needed, just use the FlowAlong Surface tool using the unrolled sur­face as the Base surface and the arc extrude as the Target surface.

The result is a perfectly smooth, high detail 3D model of a ring ready to be manufactured.

Good luck in your modeling!

Any questions, write to my e-mail below.

Juan Santocono,

Industrial Design

jsantocono@fibertel.com.ar

A free trial of T-Splines for Rhino may be downloaded at www.tsplines.com.

]]> http://www.rhino3dhelp.com/tutorials/designing-a-ring-with-t-splines/feed/ 1 http://www.rhino3dhelp.com/tutorials/help-with-portable-air-circulator/ http://www.rhino3dhelp.com/tutorials/help-with-portable-air-circulator/#comments Sat, 05 Apr 2008 13:49:57 +0000 Ivan http://www.rhino3dhelp.com/tutorials/help-with-portable-air-circulator/ Lets make air circulator this time. I’ll help you with basics here and we will model one nice model in the end.

Resources

Blueprints (required registration, but I think it is worth!)

STEP 1

Again, in this tutorial I have also skipped the blueprints setup.

First, create 3 outline curves in Front viewport with InterpCrv and bridge two upper with one line using polyline (good to have osnap Near option turned on)

Next, split those two bridged curves with that created line (bridge).

Create using InterpCrv outline for the handle section, and offset by 1 inside.

Trim the two curves and split outline curves.

Then, from right viewport, create three lines, and Fillet the corners with 1 unit. Offset that curve by 1 unit inside, and you will create another instance of this curve, but this one won’t have filleted corners.

Extrude those two curves and trim two newly created surfaces with the curves in Front viewport.

The two curves for handle section need to be positioned on the center of your base surfaces. I’ve done that by first creating the surface with Surface from 3 or 4 Corner Points command (SrfPt) and I positioned that surface on the middle of my model. I’ll use that surface for future centerings (I hide it when not needed).

When you moved those two curves to the center, extrude them according to image below:

Here, I’ve used BothSides option in Extrude command. Notice the Top viewport to see the extrusion distance.

Blend the edges of coresponding surfaces, check image below for reference…

Connect blend curves with lines on the mid

Using Network Surface command create surface out of two blend curves and one line.

Do this step for 3 other parts, and join the surfaces. Next, we need to blend the inner and outer surface… I used 0.5 for both sides blend bulge.

In the picture above you can see that I didn’t use blend for connecting the two network surfaces, instead I used Sweep2. Do that 3 more times for other surfaces.

And for the little 3 curved surface corners I used Sweep1:

As you might notice, all these tutorials are pretty much the same. This is the method I use, and find very good. First, make the shape of the model, and then cut the details.

Well, this time we I won’t be showing you how to set the reference images in the background, as I think you have learned that from previous tutorials (I’ll add in tips & tricks section how to insert these, for future reference).

RESOURCES

STEP 1

We’ll make a rough outline trace for the speaker from Front viewport. Using polyline create 4 lines and position them using rotate like on the image below:

Then, using Trim command, trim off the parts we don’t need, so we have a closed curve. Fillet the left upper and lower edges with 12 units (I have set the resource image width to 83 units, just for the aspect ratio reference).

From top viewport, adjust the closed curve so it matches the angle as on the reference background.

Next, from the upper left corner (in top viewport) make a straight line 80 units in length. Using PointsOn turn on the control points for the closed curve, and using RemoveKnot command, remove two outer fillet knots on each round part.

And mirror that closed curve using this straight line’s mid point and Ortho option.

Using these two closed curves, create a surface with Loft command.

Close the objects both left and right sides with planar surface command (PlanarSrf) and join those three surfaces in one object.

Next, we need to make the back side curvy, so lets create a curve with Interpolated points (InterpCrv) like on the image:

Extrude the line (you can use Bothsides option to make sure it goes outside your object). Also, you will probably have to adjust the direction of extrusion, and you can do that by clicking on Direction option of Extrude command.

Trim off the parts of both extruded surface, and that object. After that, join the object.

Now, we will create a curve for splitting the base model. We are using the same method as for creating the rough outline trace as on the beginning of this tutorial…

We do this step again for top curve:

Using filletedge command fillet the two edges where our new curvy surface touches the flat surfaces.

From frot viewport, project the curve on the base model. You should get this:

Do the same for the top curve, but Project the curve on the object from Top viewport.

Copy the main object with Copy command, and paste it with Paste command (CTRL+C and CTRL+V works here). It is better to first copy, then trim the base object with one (either top or front curve) then paste that copied object and do the trimming with other (if you first trimmed with front curve, then now trim with top curve) curve.

Using earlier projected curves we will create cross sections between them with polyline command.

Mid and Perp options in Osnap toolbar are very helpful here. Near option is also needed here. Proceed with creating cross section lines until you get something like this (please not those lines need to be perpendicular to the curves).

Using sweep 2 rails (sweep2) command and set the yellow two curves from upper image as two rails, and other lines as cross sections. And tick the Closed Sweep option.

Unhide all the other parts, and join this surface with other two.

Now, you can explode that as we will be offsetting (offsetsrf – I have offset by 0.5 units) the main two surfaces and we’ll again create the cross section…

Using Duplicate border on the offset surfaces create the rail curves.

This is the same way of creating the object as few steps before, but this one is by 0.5 units smaller. I believe we could simply scale down the bigger part, but hey, this is me, and I’m making this…

Ok, so we made an alternative to non-existing shell command in Rhino3D v4 (rumor is that in v5 there will be shell command-yey!).

Yeah, yeah, I know. You must be thinking “Another rim tutorial”. Well, first of all, I’m pretty sure you will learn even one new command in this tutorial.

Resources

Video tutorial  for modeling car rim.

STEP 1

Insert the first reference image into the background of your Right Viewport. I made it 50 grids wide. You can set the background image to be in color, and remove grid with grid command. Using polyline (or just line) command, make simple straight lines according to the background image.

Trim the parts that aren’t needed, and fillet the intersections with the radius of 2. And offset by 0.4 inside.

After you made a profile for the rim, insert second reference image and using scale background image and move background image commands, position it so it somehow fits your profile curve.

Using Curve: Interpolate points command, create another profile… like on the image below. You can create one polyline in the middle of the rim.

Trim off the parts of curves you don’t need, and on the inner side of your spoke, fillet the straight line and curve with 2.

NOTE: at this point, I have rotated my curves from front view by 90 degree and positioned so the far right end of curve is in origin (0,0)

Using Remove Knot command, remove selected knots. So you end up with uninterrupted curve, so when you try to explode it, it says this: “Cannot explode single curve segments.”

Resources

cinch_connector.pdf

STEP 1

Ok, lets begin. First, using circle command you make one circle with center in origin of coordinate system (that is 0,0). Start in Right viewport. As I usually use my slide rule tool to measure dimension, I have my round measures in diameter, not radius. So, when you clicked where the center of circle will be, next you need to specify in command line that you want to input Diameter (you can, of course, divide my diameter by two, and input radius, if you feel like doing more work). Now, input our first diameter, so type in command line 3mm (that is 1.5mm radius in case you were wondering). Note that I used millimeters, so one box in grid is one millimeter.

Next, we need another circle, with the center positioned like the last circle, but bigger diameter. So, start circle command, type in 11.5mm and hit enter.

Next, we need the third circle, that one will be the same diameter as last one (11.5mm) but we will move it by 15mm right looking from Front or Top viewport. Using copy and past commands you can copy that circle, and using move command, you can move it by 15mm. Now, another circle, just 3mm to the right from the last one, and make that circle 7.4mm in diameter. Copy that circle, and move it to the right by, again, 15mm. Now, copy the first circle (the one with 3mm diameter) and move it right so its center is in the same place as the last circle (that is 33,0). You should have a series of circles like on the image below:

Now, using Loft command, start clicking on circles the same order as we created them. When prompted with loft options, select from drop down menu Straight sections, and click on Closed Loft check box. That should make you a base model like on the image below:

STEP 2

In this step we will be making some details. So lets start from the right side.

First, create in Right viewport a rectangle 1mm high, and make it longer than the smaller diameter part.

Move that rectangle by 2 mm left, and position it in the middle of our base model:

Next, create another rectangle, and position it like on the image (here you will find very useful snap turned on, and in osnap End property.

Copy that rectangle, and move left by 2mm. So there is 1mm between each rectangle. Keep doing this step until you have six of them. Then, you have to mirror them according to the middle of your base model. Check the image below:

Now,using ExtrudeCrv command extrude those rectangles so they go outside of your base model. Make sure you have Both sides to Yes, and Cap to No.

We will use that extruded rectangles to trim our base model. So, using trim command, trim off outside of your rectangles (easier if you do it from Top Viewport), and base model too (easier from Front viewport – look the image below, where the red dots are, you need to click [while in trim command of course]).

Using FilletEdge command, fillet the upper left edge of our base model. Set the fillet radius to 0.3mm. You should have something like on the image below: