RHINO Curves and Surfaces

this is an overview of curves and surfaces in rhinoceros Rhino so you see there's various types of curves between first degree or straight curves with sharp corners and multi degree curves which we'll get into in a second surfaces they're our only surfaces there is no such thing as a actual solid in Rhino and the closest thing to a solid is a closed or watertight poly surface so if I explode this it will reduce it to its elements that is the closest thing in Rhino to a solid is a watertight poly surface so starting with curves there's various ways to make curves line the line command and you'll see that when you click a command you have these options down at the bottom sort of helpers that encourage you that anytime you do any option really in right now especially towards the beginning pay attention to the command line while the function is operational and you'll see very useful native tools so there are other ways to make a vertical line but there's sort of standard out-of-the-box helpers so if you click that and you'll see different types normal to a surface by second order lines explore these as you move in any option in rhino so polylines are basically a chain of lines if I explode them they're no different than a single line and if I join multiple lines like if I use the line command and make several and join this it is just a polyline so I don't typically use the line command that much I use polyline and if I need to access individual lines I'll hit explode when you have a element selected hitting X 10 see the command line there turns points on it allows you to grab individual points and manipulate them and if it's a kit add agreed curve a smooth curve you'll have access to control points so you'll see polyline by default makes a chain of one degree curves and then we'll go to for example the control point curve and I'll actually trace this line what it's doing is using a control point and then creating a line among those control points so if I hit f10 you'll see that the control points of this line match exactly that polyline so this approximation this idea of a degree curve becomes important a curves degree like this make a new one so there are the control points and then there is the control through points curve through points or I see this is interpret curve I set up that quickie for IC so if you haven't set that up interpret curve is the command and this will make a curve through the points that you're clicking so you know that your curve is passing through those points and the control points for those curves are something very different they're what's necessary to to basically hit those points as you create the curve so getting f10 again the control points of the curve this idea of curvature degree so any curve or surface actually rebuild is a typical command are typically a common come in it shows you in parentheses the current status so this curve has one two three four five six points there's a one degree curve so these are the straight lines now the preview is showing what will become if I go ahead with these options so a degree curve by rebuilding this into let's say six points and a third degree curve is turning that into a smooth curve the degree of curvature means that this is was a third degree curve if I manipulate this point it will affect the curve up to this point the next point and then the third point it locks in so this curve will not be edited beyond the bounds of that point so if I drag this you'll see that the curve sort of peels away from the original curve but is not affected beyond see if I can can't really print screen it but you'll see above this curve here there's sort of no more distortion to the curve so the idea of a curve degree means how many control points out it is affected a second degree curve I want to rebuild this into a second degree curve with six points okay means that if I adjust this you've got one two and Beyond second point it is not affected that's curvature curve degree so create a polyline clicking I have ortho on you'll see that it's without clicking anything else I'm making right angles I leave or go on by holding shift it will let you break that right angle to orthographic constraint you can that's your preference you can leave that off and hold shift to snap to ortho I just tend to find that work for graphic constraint more useful on and break it when I want to holding tab or hit on sorry hitting tab will whatever direction you're in if you hit tab it maintains that direction see the line turned white my mouse is over here but it's constraining the line to that direction it's a very useful tool you'll see when I snap it's perpendicular to that line so if I'm moving this direction and you'll see if you these get annoying these sort of object snaps you can turn off smart track and it won't try to do that anymore and at any point down here if you don't want snaps on you can turn off oh snap and then object snap and then you have freedom to get close to something without it overriding so if you drag the line and hit tab it's going to lock it in that direction then I'm going to snap to that point so you'll find many uses for tag it's very handy so functionality of rhino if I create a line and hit control before I click you'll see that it now is as that white from constraint Direction constraint this means it's going perpendicular to the construction plane so this grid you see that I now have a line that's elevated in space at any point on these lines I can type in a distance so you'll see here I'm moving here that's about five inches if I want to lock that into five inches I can then change the direction and know that it's going to be five inches and same goes for if I hit control and snap on that point again it's locking it down in that direction so I've now made a line vertical so I'm freely making lines in and out of the construction plan so moving here click ctrl click point and I've now made a circulation path or something that goes in and out of the plane control so I tend you this is something that you can do by from working through different view planes as you do a command you can navigate freely through the different viewports I just tend to stay in perspective and like to get used to moving in and out so three dimensions within this within this viewport so polylines curves or they're all curves but sort of a degreed curve and then there is the interpret curve or curve through points there's many other curves types and I encourage you to explore those so this meaning it goes through that point so their curves the next logical step is to make surfaces with curves there are several ways to make surfaces the most accessible or sort of common is extrude so that will bring the line in that direction now I have again options down here I can hit direction and say I want it to go from this point in that direction and now I've got a curve extruded in that direction there's various other options such as direction both sides meaning it will go in both directions of the curve solid which we'll get to in a second if this were a closed curve we'll get to it now if this were a closed curve a circle for example and I extrude this this idea of a solid means does it cap the ends so there's open no solid and then if I were to do this and hit again underscore s hit solid and you have a capped extrusion so extrude is a common method for making surfaces another common method is the planar surface so if you have curves within a single plane selecting them and hitting planar surface will create a planar surface with those trimmed out it is exactly the same process of hitting planar surface here and selecting this curve and trimming out the inside so again that's a common way of making a surface inner surface if I turn on the control points here and lift this out of plane and now select these in type cleaner surface it will no longer understand that it's trimming out or making a planar surface of that of those selected curves if a curve is out of plane it can't make a planar surface there are other commands to make surfaces such as edge surface where you select four edges that have explode this edge surface and will make up to four segments or four curves but the planar surface command has to be within plane the curve selected have to be within plane and they have to be closed I can't make a planar surface of an opened curve typing closed curve then I can make any planar surface so other types of so we've got planar surface and extrude make these again I've got planar surface we have extrude now we'll do what's called a loft so a lofted surface means so I'm again holding control the moves are in and out of plane and I'll use the interpret curve to a little bit more control over that and make one more curve so a lofted surface if I select as many curves as you'd like I'm doing three in this case I type loft see that it is lofting a surface around these curves or through these curves you have some options to not simplify which means hold it very tight or rebuild it again this is sort of in capsule aiding the rebuild command - how many control points sort of the accuracy you'd like you have options to say loose you don't really care how closely it approximates it type straight sections meaning it's creating a poly surface through this so I do not simplify straight sections it is basically creating a loft between these two curves and then between these two curves and creating a poly surface if you don't have straight sections we leave it as normal preview it is going through those and creating one surface so experiment with the different types of options there there are many benefits to having them as separate curves or as or as separate surfaces or has a single surface so you'll see there I picked straight sections this has basically created two surfaces which I can explode into their individual components this normal setting so when I hit loft and I have it set to normal preview you'll see that creates a single surface you can't explode this this is one surface whereas the straight sections is the equivalent of making a loft between those curves and then between these curves so there's always multiple ways to do something and you want to experiment with the different options when creating something so you understand sort of the fastest way to if you have a chain of curves you obviously don't want to walk between each individual one if you want them as straight sections then you know that functionality is built in so you wouldn't want to have to sort of recreate that learn what's built into the software lets loft then we have sweeps so I'm going to create a line here and I'm going to sweep one sweep ISO sweep one means there's one rail it's going to take a curve what they call a cross-section curve so first I had that selected so I'm going to type sweep sweep one select the rail so the rail along which something will be swept so there's the rail I select one and then it wants cross section curves and I can select this as a rail curve and you have that surface now this is obviously the same as extruding in that direction so again there's always many ways to make something look the typical value of a sweep and I'm going to put a construction plane on this curve which we'll cover in a tutorial shortly the typical application for sweep is some kind of cross section curve here this so now I have different profiles so a sweet one this is the rail and this is the profile you'll see that it sweeps that whenever I select a round map again I could have swept the curve no the the circle and if you have a different profile you have the option to change this sweet profile you need sweep so sweep one select this curve select that cross-section and then this next cross-section and hit go and it will as it sweeps along that rail morph between the two so I'll add and get rid of that circle for now I'm going to add one more profile here I'm drawing on this construction plan so I now have I'm going to sweep along this rail and it's going to morph between these shapes so that is sweet one I'm going to go ahead down into properties and turn off the ISO curves sure the internal curvature of the internal rules or defining lines at the surface and that's that sweep now a sweep - if I have a two rails I'm going to isolate these this a sweep - does a very similar operation as the sweep one but it takes into account two rails so it will morph the cross-section object to fit sort of stretch and pull and push along those two rails again this could have been created as a loft but for example we wanted to create a circle or a closed let's do this I'll use a closed curve I now have this eye there if I were to do a sweep to between this rail and this rail and use this as the cross-section curve it now creates this is crazy one but it creates a try this and this is a pretty extreme here so this sweep to select this rail this rail and the cross-section and it's more than that along those two curves more appropriately a to real sweep allows you to create an object you wouldn't else to be able to create with a loft so sweet - 2 rails in the cross section there you go so we have planar surface extrude sweep one sweep - and loft those are really the most commonly used commands or surface generation tools we also have another we'll call clean some of this up I'll leave this clean all this up we have one called revolt so what revolve does is basically the equivalent of using a lathe tab drag it there take this and type revolve and it wants the revolve axis so I'm going to click this - there so basically along that and you'll see if I click it's revolving it around that central axis hitting you or circle will just make a full revolve but this is any sort of item that is created this way and there's many machine parts and details that call for this type of generation the revolve can be very useful in specific applications a network surface the next type will talk about a network surface is using a network of of curves and make a few curves here so it's basically a hybrid of a lot of different types of processes in a sense so if I have a definition see here of curves in one direction and then curves define in another direction a network service will figure out this sort of fit to accommodate that so you're basically defining sort of the curves in space that you want to form the surface so in this case if I decided that I would like you know a jump up here and have that come through there that this will most more closely match the new curve I defined that is a network surface so there's a lot of the curves don't have to be exactly on it will sort of approximate between them you'll see that it'll basically take the average of sort of weighted point so if I wanted this to be a straight line at that exact moment and do this network surface you'll see that it will bring that through so it's a way of creating adding curves where you want definition and letting it figure out in between those sort of construction elements and the final type will cover now is a similar concept as a it's a as a network surface but it can handle multiple types of of curves so if I were to take this let's grab this curve it can handle closed curves along with other curves it's basically taking an average can handle points can handle a lot of different things so to encourage you to experiment with this something is make a basket here and the curve command is called patch curve or patch surface I'm sorry and here you'll see in the preview we've got some options stiffness UV spans how how tight it needs to be to the original definition but this is a very powerful and too inflexible tool that you will want to experiment with that's the catch curve patch

Channel: John Cerone

Views: 400,975

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Id: znIfAyUiuQE

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 06 2013