Modeling LEM bar stool made easy in Rhino

All you beginners in Rhinoceros, now you can try this easy tutorial on modeling Lem stool. It has a little bit of everything.

Introduction

Final rendered model

Final rendered model

Ok, the above image shows what would your final model look like rendered.

So, how will we approach modeling this stool? You must be asking yourselves where should you start? Well, it doesn’t matter where you start. If you prefer tackling “harder” parts first, then it is your way of starting. However if you like to start with easier, more “solids” objects (like spheres, boxes, cylinders etc.) then you might want to start with the base and leg first. But I like to throw myself in a project head on first. So, I would go with the seat frame first then move to the wooden seat part, then go to the leg base, and then the leg.

So. lets start with the seat frame. How are we going to do that? Well, using command. For that we need one rail curve, and one section curve. What Sweep1 command does, it basically “drives” the section curve along the rail curve, and by that it makes a surface.

Lets start.

STEP 1

From your Right viewport, we will start creating straight lines. For that we will be using PolyLine command, and for extra help on creating we will turn on Snap and Ortho options from the Status bar of our Rhino window.

We need one PolyLine which will be made out of two lines:

Image 1

Image 1

Ok, in the image above you can see our PolyLine. What I did is started from the Origin (the place where y-axis green line meets x-axis red line). So, we turned on the Snap option so we can easily snap to the origin. Starting our PolyLine from there, I then input in the command line the number which will be the length of the first part of our PolyLine. So, I typed in 2.7 and confirmed it with Enter key. After that you can see that your line in viewport is now exactly 2.7 units long, and you can set the direction in which it will go. Now, our Ortho option comes in handy because we want this line to be straight along x-axis. After you aimed it, just click so you confirm the other end of first part of PolyLine. Next, we need one line 3.5 units long, and going along y-axis. You need to do all this while still in PolyLine command.

Then, you will need a small line 0.8 units long and under certain angle of 60 degrees. We will start again our PolyLine (or in this case it is enough to use just Line) command and start our line from the origin, and inputting in commandline a number 0.8 and confirming it with enter key we will lock the line’s length, and after that you just input in the commandline <60 and confirm it with enter key. This way you will have locked both length and angle you need that line to be made.

Image 2

Image 2

Ok, when you’ve done that, we now need to “smooth” the transitions between the line parts. We want them to be rounded under certain radius, and we will do that with command. So, go ahead and start the Fillet command, and use 0.5 units as radius. You need to click on the two ends of two matching lines. You should have something like on the image below:

Image 3

Image 3

After filleting the corners, we need to all the curves into one open curve. Just selecting all (CTRL+A) and running Join command will do just that.

Now, we need the same set of curves on the other side, and the distance between those two will be 2.75 units. So, using command we will copy that line exactly by 2.75 units to the right (working from Front viewport) by inputting the 2.75 and confirming it with enter key. That way we are locking the Copy distance on 2.75.

Image 4

Image 4

Ok, now we need to use some OSnap. If you aren’t familiar with it, you should check out OSnap introduction. Using End OSnap option, we will snap to both ends of two curves and create a between them:

Image 5

Image 5

Now we need to the corners between our newly created two lines and two curves. The radii are the same as before:

Image 6

Image 6

Now, again, using command join all the cruves and lines into one closed curve. And there you go, we made one very nice and accurate rail which we will be using to create a seat frame in just few moments.

Before that we need to create a section curve.

We’ll do that with command from Right viewport. Make sure once you start Rectangle command you click on the Rounded option in the command line. That way after creating the rectangle the command will ask us to input the corner radius for all four corners. So, for the first corner we will input 0.25 units, and for the other 0.1 units. For the corner radius we need to input 0.02. Then you should get something like on the image below:

Image 7

Image 7

Ok, you noticed we created this in god knows what position. No fear, we just need to move it  a bit with command. In this moving process, we will use OSnap option Mid as it will come in handy because we need to move that rectangle from its midpoint to the midpoint on the closed rail curve.

Image 8

Image 8

Ok, now we have both our rail curve, and section curve. And now we can go ahead and create a surface out of the two. Using command we will do just that. For the Sweep1 option, leave it as it is:

Image 9

Image 9

Great, we got our seat frame surface. Moving on to the seat surface. For that we also need a set of curves, as you already figured that out for yourselves, for each surface creation we need curves. But, in this case, we won’t be creating new set of curves, but rather using the existing ones.

Now would be a great idea to move this frame surface into another layer and hide that layer. Lets go create a new layer and name it “Seat Frame”. Now, select the frame surface, and right click on the “Seat Frame” layer, and select Change Object Layer. Now our surface is in this layer. We can easily lock or hide the layer by clicking on the little yellow bulb so it becomes blue (turned off).

Image 10

Image 10

Image 11

Image 11

Related posts

Pages: 1 2 3

14 Responses to “Modeling LEM bar stool made easy in Rhino”

  1. Luis says:

    Nice tutorial to start. Thanks !

  2. Frantz says:

    Great tutorial, I enjoyed modeling this bar stool. The only problem I’m not too sure how to render and get the materials you used in the finishes.
    Edit: I do have v-ray installed but not sure how it works.

  3. Dino says:

    Great tutorial for us beginners. As suggested by Frantz it would really help everyone out if you could supplement this with a tutorial addressing how you rendered the final image, as it looks amazing and this is a completely different beast than just creating the model. Any tips and tricks used to produce such a life-like image would be extremely helpful. Again, great tutorial and keep ’em coming!

  4. Zubin says:

    I pretty much started Rhino from scratch with your diving knife tutorial and I’m planning to go through each one of them. That should pretty much cover most of the modelling techniques I would need. I’m really learning a lot thanks to your detailed tutorials. Thanks a lot !!!!

  5. Marius says:

    I thank you for this nice tutorial. All the best.

  6. Chiwon says:

    Thank you so much! 🙂 It’s great tutorial~!

  7. David Wei says:

    It is good. The more i read, the more skillful I become. Thanks very much

  8. Rodriguez says:

    Nice tutorial for beginner, but can’t do something, because my software is not PRO. I have TurboCad 14 Deluxe and the manual incluided only show tutorial to 2D. I dont know use Workplane to make 3D objects and how asembling part on 3D. If somebody can help me???????

  9. Mr. Mole says:

    Thank you for the tutorial! It was great!

  10. AlanGarcia says:

    Thaks so much! I´m studing Industrial Design and this help me a lot! but..
    How did you add the wood and metal texture? it looks so real in the final picture, how did you do that?

  11. Alejandro says:

    Hey
    Thanks a lot for the tutorial. It’s really helpfull. Do you have any tutorials on V-ray?

  12. Hi ,
    First of all , this is a fantastic site ! Thank you for
    modeling a wind up clock tutorial ! I would like to
    know if there are tutorials for vintage wind up mechanical
    toys ! I am very passionate about wind up toys and
    am looking forward to your response ! Thank you very much again for this
    brilliant site and resources !

  13. Kyle says:

    First, thank you for taking the time to produce this tutorial. I’m a third year ID student learning Rhino for the first time since they only teach us Alias and Solidworks in school. I’ve been using Alias Automotive for the past two years so learning Rhino is a little bit easier and different in terms of command naming. Second, the only criticism I have is the wording for some of steps. I think you should verify where the second commands to the first commands are located. Ex. After choosing OffsetSrf and pressing enter, the second command to make it a solid is also located in the same command bar. I didn’t know at first where the solid option was located and hitting enter again missing the solid command. It took me several minutes to figure it out. I would just suggest literally typing every click you make, even turning off and on the various Osnap commands. Hope that helps.

    For everyone else, try using KeyShot for rendering. It is an extremely easy program to pick up.

  14. didi says:

    Great tutorial! I really appreciate your effort. I am an industrial design student my self and I find what you do very helpful. So thank you very much for this!

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.