Move an object to the front, 2D

[CurtisU]

Still on a 2D kick here.

I'm doing a drawing of a communications tower for documenting antenna locations. In the drawing the tower is constructed of lines and the antennas are solid hatched rectangles and may or may not be located on the face of the tower depicted in the drawing.

How do you move an object behind another in Rhino?

Thanks, Curtis

[CurtisU]

Actually I see what's going on, just don't know how I got there or how to get out of it.

When I look at perspective view, it's clear some objects are on a different plane.

I guess now is the time to get to understand construction planes and their relationships between viewports.

[JDcam]

One very useful tool when dealing with 2d drawings is ProjectoCplane. Assuming you are working in TOP view, select everything and use that command. It flattens everything to the cplane you are working on. It doesn't change any of the X or Y values, only changes the Z value of all entities to a consistent Zero.

[chmillman]

In addition to JD's comment... Assuming that all your stuff is now flat on the construction plane....

Rhino, being built as a 3D modeler, does not have a built-in draw-order provision for overlapping objects that are at the same Z-level. Strictly 2D programs like Illustrator have "Bring to front", "Move to back", etc..., and a lot of people go looking for something similar in Rhino, but don't find it. It becomes particularly important when you are trying to create an illustration in Rhino and have overlapping curves, you never know which one is going to be on top (visually).

Two ways to get around this: If it won't cause problems otherwise, you can simply move the objects you want to print "on top" up slightly in Z (do it with the nugde tool, a very tiny bit is all that is needed). Just remember what you did and re-flatten the drawing later. For concurrent surfaces, you will often get a sort of interference effect, physically separating them by a tiny amount will remove this as well.

The second way is to install a plug-in that puts in draw-order commands... http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.as...DrawOrder.html

--ch

[CurtisU]

Very good, thank you both for the top tips and thorough explanations.

I think I can manage now.

Curtis