Rhino.Inside for Vectorworks

[elepp]

Now that Rhino 7 was released, they introduced Rhino.Inside. It's a live link between Rhino and another software. There are plenty of advantageous uses cases for having this also in Vectorworks. We need better operability with other software packages and I am not talking import/export features. The data needs to be synced live to make important decisions on the fly.

 

Thnx!

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

This is from an excerpt from an Article online on ZHA.  They use a lot of software.

 

 

Software architecture at ZHA

Today, the company’s workflow consists of Maya, then Rhino with Grasshopper, according to Marko. 3ds Max is used occasionally for renders, while Autocad, Revit and Catia help with the more pragmatic aspects of construction planning. For architectural rendering, Zaha Hadid mainly uses V-Ray for Maya, Rhino and 3ds Max.

[xxubiqts]

4 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

This topic has come up on other threads.  Curious, why do you need Rhino 3D?  Architectural 3D is not that complex compared to engineering designs.  That is not to say that mastering Vectorworks is not complex, but architecture is Vector-Linear design.  

 

Perhaps you are not using it for Architecture which would make sense, but then why not just buy Rhino 3D.

 

I'm guessing you just aren't familiar with the landscape of professional architecture. There are plenty of good, practical reasons why this may never be implemented (business/coding/etc), but the fact of the matter is that, like I said, at the cutting edge offices Rhino is indeed used.

 

It didn't take me very long to look up one of the most prestigious American architecture offices:

https://trahanarchitects.com/

 

And guess what...their job postings require Rhino.

I don't mean to demand any new feature, only to add my name to the list of people requesting, and to point out its availability in other BIM suites.

 

If Vectorworks considers it I will be very grateful, mostly because Rhino/Grasshopper is fun!

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Thank you for pointing this out.  Never too old to learn. 

 

I am struck as much by its beauty as its complexity.  It is complex modelling by any measure, but I would take this on in Vectorworks.  It would take a while though as there is a lot of detail, but the modelling challenge is the base.  It also would take some horsepower.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

16 hours ago, xxubiqts said:

I'm guessing you just aren't familiar with the landscape of professional architecture

Although I always state that I am not an Architect or landscape designer, my career was focused on these aspects, but from an engineering perspective.  

 

2017 was the 100th anniversary of the "Battle of Vimy Ridge", a WW1 battlefield.  There was a huge ceremony in France that included heads of state, kings and queens, etc.  A university was contracted to reconstruct Vimy Ridge, as in a site model......they failed to negotiate the contract allowing the government to sole source it to me.

 

Five square miles of Battlefield, plus ~100 miles of allied and German trenching needed to be reconstructed.  

Below are two short video's.  The first is the Trailer to the Vimy Ridge movie.  The second is how it was done in Vectorworks and CINEMA 4D.  Except for the characters and a few trees, it was all done in Vectorworks, rendered and animated in C4D.

I am the sole creator.  This was all done with VW 15 and C4D on a Mac Laptop Pro, put together with iMovie.

 

Vimy Ridge

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

16 hours ago, xxubiqts said:

There are plenty of good, practical reasons why this may never be implemented (business/coding/etc), but the fact of the matter is that, like I said, at the cutting edge offices Rhino is indeed used.

As you say there are many good reasons why Rhino will never be incorporated into Vectorworks, but they may not be the reasons you believe.  Primarily, most users only use a small fraction of Vectorworks 3D capability and that is pretty much the way Vectorworks likes it.  There is no money in supporting complex 3D design.

Excluding sculpting and other animation tools, the tools to compete with the Rhino's, C4D's, Max, etc. already exist within Vectorworks, but are not promoted. 

 

The models below are all done in VW2012 or VW2015 or VW2018.  They could be found on Rhino's gallery page. 

 

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

17 hours ago, xxubiqts said:

If Vectorworks considers it I will be very grateful, mostly because Rhino/Grasshopper is fun!

Now below is something that neither Rhino or Blender can do.  This is a copy of a Formula one concept car.  It may have been done in Rhino, but it would be a surface model and would have a ceiling eventually in the engineering world.

This is a full solid model.

 

 

[line-weight]

Can you do non-destructive modelling/editing in Rhino or Grasshopper (I have never used either)? That's the big limitation of many of VW's solid modelling functions.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

13 minutes ago, line-weight said:

Can you do non-destructive modelling/editing in Rhino or Grasshopper

In the past when I was working for the Government, I occasionally had to create a model for fluid dynamics, etc.  I would just export a IGES file for that and it seemed to work.

 

I am sure Rhino has some capability in this area either on its own or a plugin, but it would be limited by being a surface model as I understand it.  This is not an area I am very familiar with and could be way off base.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pat Stanford]

By non-destructive do you mean operations that maintain the history?

 

There are certainly operations that do not maintain history in VW. But those are slowly being corrected. Fillet/Chamfer now have history available.

 

I don't know specifically about Rhino or Grasshopper, but anything inside of VW will have the same limitations as manual operation of VW does regarding history vs non-history operations.

[line-weight]

Don't know how correctly I am using the terminology but essentially the idea that if you have taken steps 1 to 20 to build your finished object, you can go back and change step 5 slightly without having to re-do any of steps 6-20.

 

And that you can do this in a reasonably convenient way.

 

VW sort-of maintains history for some operations, although it's often very inconvenient to go back more than a few steps and still understand what's happening.

 

There are some operations like extrude-along-path where you can post-edit the path and profile but again doing so is not made at all easy or convenient.

 

And some like the loft tool where there's no going back once you've pressed the button.

 

People also use the term parametric modelling, and of course we can do that with many architectural objects in VW but not really with VW's solid modelling tools.

[zoomer]

I like destructive modeling.

 

Starting with Microstation I was used to make copies/backups of

important model steps, if needed.

3DSMax like C4D worked primarily with modifiers, so non destructive.

But I soon realized that I can convert everything to a Mesh and edit

all parts at a time, without losing any control.

Modo at the beginning was absolutely destructive modeling only and

I did not miss anything.

 

When in a destructive modeler, you just need to have the proper

editing tools which Modo had.

And as far as Selections, Item Tree/manager, Object Info, Modeling

and Editing Tools, Preview, Render Settings, Material control, ....

I still miss that standards in any other 3D or CAD Apps so much.

 

On the other hand I like parametric Objects in CAD/BIM.

I even prefer it for architectural modeling.

Like VW's PIOs and Styles.

I could not live with my basically totally destructive Bricscad's Solids

modeling approach though. And for Solids I do not want any history

I want them to be cleaned up, optimized and simplified for absolute

reliability after each operation.

 

 

[zoomer]

3 minutes ago, line-weight said:

if you have taken steps 1 to 20 to build your finished object, you can go back and change step 5 slightly without having to re-do any of steps 6-20.

 

I think this is Modo's Modifier Stack or Blender's Geometry Nodes

or even iterative things like Grasshopper. Or something like Mechanical CAD (?)

 

But where can you do that in VW ?

Edit Path or Profile in EAP, change the Profiles of an Extrude ... just 2 steps.

With Solid Add/Subtraction/... and Fillets, you will get a few more steps.

But AFAIR editing components of multi step Solid Subtractions wasn't

very reliably for me in the past (?)

 

Or with Marionette ... as long as you stay inside your Marionette envelope ?

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

25 minutes ago, Pat Stanford said:

By non-destructive do you mean operations that maintain the history?

My apologies, completely off base (not the first time). Thought the original question was about Fluid dynamics.

 

 

[line-weight]

43 minutes ago, zoomer said:

 

 

With Solid Add/Subtraction/... and Fillets, you will get a few more steps.

But AFAIR editing components of multi step Solid Subtractions wasn't

very reliably for me in the past (?)

Yes you can get quite a lot of steps (in theory) but like you say, isn't always very reliable. And often once you are so many steps back, what you are looking at is rather abstract and you can lose track of what you are actually doing.

 

A few years ago we got the "edit features" option, along with a rather dishonest marketing video that made it look much more useful than it actually is.

 

 

[Tom W.]

7 minutes ago, line-weight said:

A few years ago we got the "edit features" option, along with a rather dishonest marketing video that made it look much more useful than it actually is.

 

I've never completely understood what this is or why I'd opt for it over Edit Solid...

[bjoerka]

The history of modeling in 3D is one of the best options insinde vw (as long as you don´t convert your model into something that does not support the history.-)).

 

I have done several models that have been printed as 3d objects, that completely obtain their history to modify their geometry from the very first steps.

 

I don´t know any other cad solution that provides that feature.

 

But i think you have to differenciate between history base modeling and parametric modeling.

Soliworks, Catia are, in my understanding, more parametric based. The same to Rhino in combination with Grasshopper.

But these programms need a lot of knowledge to get the best for your final result and what you want to adjust.

 

Several years ago we designed for a german car company some kind of "silver flow" architectural element, that was part of exhibition stands. That was completely done in Grasshopper and tweaked a lot of parameters. More part of a spatial component.

And also several years ago, i designed an ipad cover, customized to the exhibition and clients needs, that i still can tweak from it´s basic geometry to the new meassurements compared to actuall ipad model, based on the history based modeling inside vw...

 

attached 2 screenshot of "things" that are modeled with complete history, down to it´s original shape...

 

printed hand that holds a small lcd screen ( luxemburg expo pavillon / dubai)

 

 

ipad case for a visitor experience in vienna

[xxubiqts]

I feel like this thread is losing the point a bit...

Almost any 3D modeling software these days is capable of impressive results. It's not really about what is the "best" modeller. Vectorworks is great, Rhino is great, Blender is great, etc.

 

Rhino.Inside would be nice to have because:
- There is nothing else like Grasshopper and its huge network of plugins for everything from acoustic modeling to building science analysis. Just check out https://www.ladybug.tools/

- It is widely used in digital fabrication which is common in architecture offices (CAM, 3d-print, etc.)

- It would be another "checkmark" for VW when compared to Revit and ArchiCAD (there is a reason they've included it!)

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

This thread is so far off base it may come around to the original point.

Vectorworks did look at the Rhino thing as I understand it a few years ago.  Perhaps they thought that Rhino would do the support, taking that cost away from them.  Anyway it fizzled out.

 

I suppose for users who already use Rhino, having it within Vectorworks has value.  But, it would be a surface modeller within a solid modeller, which would be problematic.   Another problem would be Rhino has a learning curve that is not easy, takes some work.  Like 3D modelling in Vectorworks.  There would be no walls, roofs, site model work done in 2D and then presto, a 3D model.  This would be foreign to many users.

[line-weight]

2 hours ago, bjoerka said:

attached 2 screenshot of "things" that are modeled with complete history, down to it´s original shape...

 

I'm sort of interested in what this actually means and looks like. To get to its original shape do you mean, you double click on the solid, "edit solid" and then can repeat and carry on through all the operations, back to an initial extruded rectangle or something like that? If the original shape is an extruded rectangle, can you go back to it, change its dimensions a little, and then return to the end result, with slightly different dimensions?

[bjoerka]

Exactly as you described .-)

The case was modeled in 2016 and still works down to it´s original shape .-)

250 of them have been printed in the first step and several after they have been damaged. But the ipads survived .-)

 

 

[line-weight]

Thanks, interesting!

 

Am I right to understand that the filleted edges, you did those by sectioning with a NURBs surface rather than the fillet tool? Why was that?

 

One of the things I can imagine wanting to do with something like this, is go back and change the radius of those filleted edges. How possible would that be?

 

One of the problems with NURBs is that you can construct them from some basic geometry (straight lines, arcs and so on) and then compose that all together and then convert the resulting polyline into a NURBs. But this is one of the points where you can't then go backwards: you can't go back and change the radius of one of the arcs in the original geometry. And it's very difficult (often impossible) to do so accurately within the reshaping options for a NURBs curve.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Using NURBS tools with standard 3D tools causes a problem in the modelling pipeline in terms of history or Parametric as users are accustomed to.  But, it is not insurmountable.  The option to "keep curves" in the dialogue boxes is key.  Ungroup will undo fillets/chamfers.

 

The models I have posted on this thread were not made without trial and error.  If I could not have gone back in time with NURBS curves, I could not have made the models, but it is an undocumented process.  

 

With NURBS, time is the only teacher.

[line-weight]

2 hours ago, VIRTUALENVIRONS said:

Using NURBS tools with standard 3D tools causes a problem in the modelling pipeline in terms of history or Parametric as users are accustomed to.  But, it is not insurmountable.  The option to "keep curves" in the dialogue boxes is key.  Ungroup will undo fillets/chamfers.

 

The models I have posted on this thread were not made without trial and error.  If I could not have gone back in time with NURBS curves, I could not have made the models, but it is an undocumented process.  

 

With NURBS, time is the only teacher.

 

There is no "keep curves" tickbox when you convert a polyline to a NURBS curve.

 

Consider the following set of steps:

1. Make a polyline with several straight segments.

2. Apply a fillet of radius X to each of the corners between segments.

3. Convert the polyline to a NURBs curve.

4. Duplicate & 3d-move the NURBs curve

5. Create a loft object using those two NURBS curves.

 

Now I have my finished object. But what if I think ... actually that fillet radius is a bit too small and I want to change it to Y instead of X?

 

Essentially I have to start again. Even if I've kept the cures during the loft procedure; even if I've kept a copy of the polyline from step 1. I have to go back to step 1. I have to do the fillet operation, and then every single subsequent operation again.

 

This is very different to being able to go back into the history of an object, change a single variable, then have the object re-generate itself accordingly.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

59 minutes ago, line-weight said:

There is no "keep curves" tickbox when you convert a polyline to a NURBS curve.

This of course is a true statement, but this is the way I would do this.  See below.  This also gives me the option to use Variable fillet and ungroup at any time removes the fillet, but also the dialogue box will change the fillet as in history

 

 

 

 

[nicovlogg]

Illuminating thread!

 

Distilled:

"Could we integrate these two tools better?"

"Here, look at my work"

"Why would you want to? Nobody uses Rhino"

"Here, look at my other work"

"VW can do everything Rhino does"

"Here, look at my work again"

"I have never used Rhino but am sure it's not as good as VW"

 

Rhino is an increasingly important part of many large firms' conceptual workflow. Competitors will arise and maybe some will take its place eventually. Currently, however, not adapting to that workflow means you will be left behind. For most, that doesn't matter. It's all still 2D right? 🙂