I can answer your Rhino questions

[Dan B]

Rhino is our exclusive surfacing software. We currently have 11 seats, and I have written VB programs and VBscripts to customize it. If you have any Rhino related questions and/or comments, I can probably answer them for you.

Dan

[CNCadmin]

Welcome to the forum Dan!

[twombo]

Hi Dan

Working with a eval copy of Rhino 3.0 and trying to drape a cloud of points. I am using Floating point solutions Point Clound for Rhino.

Acording to he book i select: CURVE - Reate Point clound and am directed to drig window over points. I dto that and the poins turn yellow. I am directed to press ENTER and when I do the points turn from yellow to black.

I then select Drape Surface Over Points from the the Surface pallet and am then directed to Drag a Window over the points to drape. When I do that there is no apaprent effect other that the command line goes blank expecting command i
I presume expecting me t oenter a command. I have tried Drape and DrapePt. to no avail.

Am I banging up into the limitation of the cloud of points size imposed by the Rhino eval copy? I tried selecting fewer points to no avail.

Looks like a good program to use in my future efforts protyping carved insturment parts fom digitized inputs of existing surfaces. This is very a basic task for our manufacturing processes, so if this isnot esily done , I look for another application.

The point cloud in question is Example 3 from the Floating Point Solutions template folder.

All outputs will go to VisualMill 4.0 for cutting path development.

Thanks in advance

[twombo]

Honest, man, I really can spell! I'm having a bad "keyboard" day.... Kinda' like a bad hair day!!!!

[hardmill]

I downloaded the demo and really like it the more i
use it. Don't know if we'd have use for it at work, they all
use solidworks. I may consider it for myself as im trying
to start my own business.

[HuFlungDung]

I took a look at the demo, too. It seems to be a well laid out program. I don't often have call for free form shapes, but I did get approached by someone lately who provided me with an actual "freeform" model they want a mold machined for, and this might be the program to make that job possible.

If I can model it here and then load it into OnecncXP to machine it, I'll be off to the races

[Dan B]

Hi Twombo,

I have not used the Floating Point plug-in, so I cannot comment directly on that. However, the drape command should work. I will admit that that is a command I never have a need to use, but playing around with it a little this morning, it seems to work well here. I don't know if there is a size limitation in the eval version. I really doubt it. To the best of my knowledge, the eval version is identical to the SR1 version, of course with the saving limitations. I will inquire to see if there are any known issues with the drape command. I'll let you know.

Hi HuFlungDung,

Rhino works quite well for non-freeform objects too. Most of what we do would be considered non-freeform. We use Mechanical Desktop to design our fixtures, but Rhino could work just as well, with the exception of the parametrics.

Dan

[Carver]

Drape works great on freeform objects with the limitation of undercut surfaces. It simple acts as the name implies as though a piece of fabric was draped over the sutface.
On Rhino,
We reverse engineer a consderable variaton of objects from Human faces to a machine components and have not found a shortcoming in Rhino. The current version suffers mildly of growing pains as it is almost brand new, but the developers are bringing it up to speed at an incredible rate. If you are accustomed to a "hard" cad progrm with parametrics, you will miss that. I allowed my Mechanical Desktop license to expire after I found Rhino.
Enjoy, Phill P.

[Dan B]

Hi Carver,

Version 3 works pretty well now with Service release 1. If you are using V3, check that you have the Mar 5 build. If not, make sure you download SR1 from the Rhino web site. SR2 is in beta right now, and it looks pretty good. They are adding some display options which will be welcome by all. Most of the issues still outstanding are relatively minor. There are still some speed issues with the STEP translator, but hopefully this will get resolved before the official release of SR2.

Dan

[RayDOsity]

I've been using Rhino since v1.1 and can answer your questions as well. I deal mostly with product design. I can also reccomend an excellent tut for you intermediate users. Check out:
http://www2.rhino3d.com/resources/di...ge=&listing=83

Excellent tut for getting past that stuck on intermediate user trap.

[hardmill]

Welcome to the forum.
Great to have "rhino knowledge" on board.

PEACE

[RayDOsity]

Thanks for the welcome and my mailbox is always open . Picking Rhino also shows you have good taste and recognize quality programming when you see it. Since the release of SR2 99% of the remaining bugs in v3 are display related.