TUTORIAL 01: RHINO INTERFACE. By Jeremy L Roh, Professor of Digital Methods I UNC Charlotte s School of Architecture

Transcription

1 TUTORIAL 01: RHINO INTERFACE By Jeremy L Roh, Professor of Digital Methods I UNC Charlotte s School of Architecture

2 Upon opening Rhinoceros 4.0, a Startup Template Dialog Box will appear. Left-click on the various options. A fter you click on the template and it is highlighted, you will see a note at the bottom of the box that indicates when you will use that particular template. If you are modeling objects the size of a truck or larger than you would select Large Objects - Feet. If you are modeling objects smaller than a truck, you would select Small Objects - Feet. Don t worry too much if you select the wrong template. You can always change the units of measure in the Document Properties. Notice at the bottom of the box, there is a check box to Ask every time Rhino starts. If you uncheck that box, the next time you start Rhino it will skip the dialog box and open the last template you selected. It is probably a good idea to keep the box checked so that you can make the appropriate choice each time.

3 Rhinoceros Interface consists of the standard views, icon toolbars, menus, and a command line. Everything that you do in Rhinoceros can be done in many different ways. As you become comfortable working in the software, you will want to find what works best for you. For example: If you select an icon on a tool bar, it sends a command to the command line to activate that tool. Pay attention to the name of the command sent to the Command Line. You can also just start typing in the command at the Command Line to perform the same task. You can also find the same command in the menus at the top of the screen. Icons tend to be quicker than menus and command line inputs tend to be quicker than hunting for icons. You just have to find what is more comfortable for you while working. The standard view window layout (Top, Front, Right, and Perspective) is common in high end 3D design programs such as Rhinoceros, 3D Studio Max, and Maya. Drawing in one view, draws that object in all the views looking at the object in Plan, Elevation, and 3D. To activate a view, hover over that view and begin your actions such as mouse movement or tool selection.

4 To pan within the 2D views (Top, Front, and Right), hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse. Pay attention to the World Icon at the bottom left of each view. This will tell you what the Red and Greed lines represent. In this case the Red line is the X-Axis and the Green is the Y-Axis. Where the 2 lines come together represents the World Origin which is at 0,0,0. Every 3D point in space can be defined by the x,y,z coordinate. The coordinates are relative to the World Origin at 0,0,0. Positive numbers occur to the right and negative numbers are to the left along the X-Axis. Positive numbers occur up and negative numbers are down along the Y-Axis.

5 Also, if your pan or zoom cursor reaches the boundaries of the view, you will notice that it loops through the view. This continues the pan or zoom sequence. For example: If you pan to the left in the Persepective view and it reaches the left edge of the view, the hand cursor will loop and appear on the right side of the screen allowing you to still pan to the left as many times as required. In the 3D Perspective View, panning requires you to hold the right mouse button down while holding the SHIFT key on the keyboard.

6 To orbit in the 3D Perspective View, hold down the right mouse button only and move the mouse around. The view will rotate.

7 In all views, using the mouse wheel will zoom in and out on the object. Zoom in equals scrolling the mouse wheel up (away from yourself) and zooming out equals scrolling the mouse wheel down (towards yourself). You can also zoom in and out by holding down the right mouse button while holding the CTRL key.

8 Toolbars can be dragged to any location by holding down the left mouse button over the top of a toolbar and then drag it across the screen. The toolbars can be free-floating over the view windows or can be docked on the borders of the screen.

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10 To customzie the view/document properties, select File and then select Properties.

11 As mentioned before, you can get to everything in Rhino in multiple ways. Instead of going to the File menu and selecting Properties as shown on the last slide, you could just start typing DocumentProperties in the Command Line to get to the same dialog box.

12 For now, we will only modify properties within the Units, Grid, and Appearance sections of the dialog box. Units deal with the unit of measure: how you enter dimensional information or how Rhino displays dimensional information. The Grid is the gray grid that you see in the background in every view. This is also known as your Construction Plane. Appearance is where you can customize the Look of each of the views such as colors of the background, colors of selected objects, etc.

13 For Example: In this instance, I have changed the background of each of the viewports from gray (R159, G159, B159) to black (R0, G0, B0).

14 Under the Units section, you can change your overall document property units of measure from Inches to Feet or to other units of measure. This is where you would change your units if you happened to select the wrong template at initial startup.

15 Also, you can change how your units of measure are entered in the Command Line and how Rhino displays the units of measure. Decimal form would mean that you would have to enter distances such as onefoot three inches as 1.25 (3-inches in decimal form equals 3/12; thus.25 ). Feet & Inches is the more common way to show Architectural Units where you can actually write one-foot three inches as 1 3. The apostrophe represents feet and the quotation mark represents inches.

16 Under the Grid section of the Document Properties dialog box, you can change the size of the grid shown in the background of the viewports; as well as, the Snap spacing. Grid Extents is the number of feet (in this case) from the origin that the grid will extend to. From the intersection of the Red and Green axis lines to the outer portion of the grid is equal to the Grid Extents. Minor Grid Lines are the smallest portion of the grid and shown on the screen as very light gray. Major Grid Lines are the darker gird lines that occur at a specified number of Minor Grid Lines.

17 If you want to set your grid to show inches and feet, make your Minor Grid Lines set to feet (1/12). This will display a minor grid line every one-inch. Then make your Major Grid Lines occur every 12 Minor Grid Lines to show a Major Grid Line every foot. Make sure that your Snap Spacing at the bottom of your dialog box matches your grid spacing so that when you activate the Snap feature, your cursor snaps to the grid lines.

18 To expand a viewport window to full-screen, double leftclick on the name of the viewport. In this case I double leftclicked on the word Top to expand the Top view to full screen and to hide the other three views. Typically when working in a view, it is best practice to expand the view to full-screen so that you can take advantage of the allotted screen space.

19 Whenever you select an icon on a toolbar while the Command Help dialog box is open, the information within the dialog box will change to give you instructions on how to use that tool. This is a great way to learn the capabilities of that tool and to learn the steps that are required to use that particular command. Whenever you select a tool within Rhinoceros, always pay attention to the Command Line. The text that shows up in BOLD letters indicates the required type of input. Hold down the left-mouse button over the icon with the circle and question mark. Then in the pop-up tool bar select the icon that shows the question mark within a box. This will open a docked window to the right of your screen. If you left-click on the icon with the circle and the question mark, you will get a pop-up help dialog box. This can also be a help resource in that it has a searchable text line where you can type in what you are looking to do.

20 Whenever you hover over icons on toolbars, you will see a yellow box appear that gives you a Tool Hint. This box tells you what type of command that tool icon will perform. Pay attention to the image that looks like a computer mouse where there is a black button shown on the left or the right. Not all tools have this feature; however, in this example, if you press the left mouse button, you will select the Polyline command or if you press the right mouse button, you will select the Line Segment command.

21 Icons that have a triangle shown in the lower right portion of the icon button, indicates that if you hold down the left mouse button on that particular icon, a toolbar flyout will reveal additional tools/command icons. You can then drag that toolbar flyout anywhere on the screen. You can keep it floating as this example shows or you can dock the toolbar on the borders of the screen.

22 Also, notice in the Command Line that when a particular tool is selected and the Command Line Prompt (the statement shown in BOLD letters) has additional information within (paranthesis), this indicates that you have additional choices/ settings to select for that particular command. Be aware that sometimes within toolbar flyouts, there are additional icons that have additional flyouts embedded. In this case, the Transform toolbar was flown out from the main toolbar to the left. Then the Move toolbar was further flown out to reveal additional Move commands. You can either move your mouse cursor over the choices (notice they highlight blue and are underlined) or you can enter the letter underlined from the keyboard to select that setting. The trick here is that there are tools/commands hidden within toolbars, toolbar flyouts, and then choices within the settings of each tool. You have an idea of what you want to do; you just have to know where to find it. Use the Help dialog boxes, tiral and error, and the professors expertise to determine the best way to perform a task.

23 As mentioned before, sometimes you don t know where to find a particular toolbar or icon; therefore, just start typing in the Command Line what task you would like to perform. A selection of possible options will autocomplete and show you which command best matches what your are looking for.

24 Always Save your work. Save frequently and whenever you can. At first, you will need to select Save As to initially name your file. After you have established a file name, you can just click Save from the File menu. In addition to saving your work frequently, be sure to copy your file periodically and rename it with a date suffix. For instance, if I save my file one day and it is called, house.3dm, I would copy that file within Windows and rename it to be house_ dm. This is good practice so that you have multiple copies of the file that you are working on. Files can become corrupt or you can possibly lose work due to various computer issues. If you have been keeping multiple copies of your work, you won t lose all of your work; just some of it. In addition to all of the above, be sure you backup your files on other external devices so that if your hard drive crashes, your work is still safe.

25 All Rhinoceros files end in a.3dm file extension and also contain an icon that looks like a Rhino in a black box.