Anyone here knows Rhino or Solidoworks?

I really want to learn either program. I have gotten into Rhino and I love it. I know the basics but honestly I am more interested in Solidworks for its History stack.

Anyone here use these 2 packages professionally? I have a few questions I would like answered

At work we have a Digital Tutors account ( now Pluralsight) and learning resources isn't an issue, it's just a matter of seeing if the software is right for me.

Cheers

 

Hello , I am using rhino activity for the last 14-15 years, and have used for all kinds of stuff from cad to poly modeling. For me still an excellent all around tool.

Pm me if you are interested.

Cheers

 

Awesome!! I am very interested I'll put the questions on here so everyone can get an idea. I'll PM you when things get messy


Here is Question #1

Now, I work with CAD that comes from Toyota for our work, and I've spoken to people who work at Toyota at the modeling and production level and they use Alias for designing and CATiA for finalising and production/testing etc.

My burning question is this.

When designing a car for example and you have that Bodyline/cut line across the side and it goes through 2 wheel arches. If you want to move that line up, can you move it up above the wheel arches and it "untrims" itself? Or do you have to start over again.

Question #2

I have asked an expert about this and he said it can't be done in rhino and it should be the last step - but Can you in either software come back and edit the Fillet amount on an edge?


Cheers

 

Hey,

Question 2 first I assume you work with nurbs surfaces in Rhino, and Surfaces are not that flexible like poly really and doesn't offer that much room for such maneuvers its usually means a do over.

But there might be a way to re create the edge that you filleted and reapply the fillet.

After you fillet you can remove the filleted curved part, then you get a gap now on the third pic you see the command connect surfaces, this command lets you basically connect the two surfaces and recreate the edge without redoing the whole part. Now sometimes this connect surfaces command wont seem to work from the first go so repeat it.





So essentially there might be a way to re apply the fillet without a whole redo of the surrounding surfaces.

Question 1 : depends what you have done I can only give you a simple answer now, as its just theoretical stuff. So moving a such line would be possible but your wheel arches edge would go up the line.

In the past I have been deigning some cars for fun so I would usually keep a copy of something before cutting or modifying a area further, as I knew I could change it, put it on a different layer and hide it as I usually would be making more versions.

This helped me to avoid rebuilding a whole piece etc , and also would be helpful also with the first question.

One suggestion I have is that you if you can buy (or what ever ) T splines for Rhino, as its a very very good tool.

You can work with it on Tsplines that can be converted to poly or surfaces depending how on how you produce the T spline.

Cheers

 

Awesome - Thank you.

I save so many backups and all my build curves in layers, and when I need to change something I either delete that area and rebuild and join it to the rest of the mesh, or scrap everything and rebuild it all in around 20 minutes ( as the planning for the build curves is what normally takes time). I just wish it wasn't that way and I think Solidworks history stack can help avoid this.

This is what I built in Rhino, every curve and cutting object was backed up.

I have seen this done in a solidworks tutorial and this is why I just want to ask all these questions.:

A guy has text booleanUnioned into a curved surface, the then trims it so the text is curved etc. he decides he wants to change the font, the goes back to the node that created the text and changes it. he then goes down in the history stack and applies everything again on the new font. One problem he ran into is the boolean didnt work perfectly, a few letters got messed up, so had to delete booleanUnion node and apply that again while selecting all letters, however everything such as the trim just worked fine.

As fun as and robust Rhino is, I think it is best if you just recreating something and not designing it.

Yesterday I managed to ask the guy from Toyota Question #1, he said Alias can't do that, you would generally start again. It is sooooooo awesome getting answers from the Toyota team. I drilled him for questions all week - very VERY interesting guy, he knows so much. He did say Autodesk is working on something to allow that... hmmmm innnterestiiinnggg.

I guess right now with Rhino, just keep backups

Quick question, how do I isolate in view, the selected object like in Maya or Max?

 

Dont have the time to answer now in full, but have to say that rhino is mainly a design and a rapid prototyping tool.
Has even special addition for jewellery design shoe design marine design...etc.
So its definitely a design and rapid protyping tool

https://www.rhino3d.com/gallery

Visit their gallery and you will see and its main idea is to bring an idea or concept to life fast and pretty accurate, sure there are more software packages that are more advanced and are used in some industries with even higher demands

Cheers

 

Rhino has always been like that.
It always has been one of the more "basic" and straight forward CAD systems where you really have to understand each procedure to the little detail in order to operate it, rather than using parametric systems where a change of a value or based model will automatically be handled through the threads and instances for you.

I treat Rhino as a surface modeler first and foremost and only do basic solid work in Rhino, as it quickly reaches it's limits, forcing you to manually redesign and repair in surfaces (I don't work in Nurbs).

Apart from an undo / redo stack there is no possibility to go back in time and certainly no parametric capabilities as in Catia, ProE, …

Backup a lot (as you mentioned on layers - it's layer structure and capabilities are great btw, giving you all the freedom you could wish for).
Learn the command names and use it mainly from the keyboard.

I learned this from early AutoCAD versions in university classes - back then the AutoCAD version used in mechanical engineering design classes was VERY old and was majorly keyboard driven.
I have retained this working style of rather typing commands then clicking buttons - this works VERY fast in Rhino, which really is optimized for this style, making it very quick.

Also (especially if you are working on Rhino for Windows), design your personal tool stack with your most used commands up front and kick out commands you never use (I currently work in Rhino for Mac only and from what I remember from the old Windows build I used for CAD work more than 15 years ago, Rhino for Windows was very customizable in its UI - the current Mac build is more limited in this regard, yet nice and clean to work with).

There is also a great forum around Rhino with lots of helpful people including very responsive devs and moderators.
Often when I get stuck and post a question I have already help by really knowledgable people while still working in session.


Regarding your specific problem, there are many commands and function which let you un-trim, rebuild or extend certain details or entire elements and go with the change or rebuild from there.
Often I get customer data which is filleted and chamfered and have to rebuild models implementing design changes for high pressure die casting specific purposes (I run a tool making and die casting manufacturing business).

The most used tool in Rhino for an efficient rebuild is the "untrim" family of commands (do create borders, ISO lines or other boundaries of the old trim first).

 

I used to work with Solidworks, it is a quite powerful CAD tool while remaining rather easy to learn (mostly intuitive tools and functions).
It allows you to jump back in the creation tree and reorganize / change things there. It is based on 2D sketches drawn on planes, embossed / extruded and so on, and you can edit these sketches at any time in your model creation.

Going straight to 3D splines is not so easy if I remember correctly.

 

I use Solidworks professionally. Used to start by self-studying 12 years back, but also got a course once..

Edit: The Rim is quite easy to do in SW...

 

Thanks guys!
I did get the sense that rhino is a powerful, easy to use rapid prototyping software. From the Mcneel forums a dev member did mention to me that they are planning on a history stack down the line, but nothing like that is possible at the moment.
@menos | M6 Thanks for the info, that is great to know. I do mostly use typed commands and i love it.

@Mille Sabords I watched a 2 hour SW tutorial and I just fell in love! I haven't gotten my hands on SW yet but yeah, I love the sketches and all.

@NetracingEurope.org the Rim was very easy to do in rhino, but question here is, can SW edit the fillets at joining parts of the rim? can you go back in time and edit the fillet amount? (if 5 cylinders wre used to boolean out the holes in the rim face, can you scale those cylinders and then repeat the boolean at a later stage and the hole gets scaled too?)

 

I don't know if I got you right. But however, everything is editable in the tree. And of course all following manipulations will be changed as well. You will get errors only if for example the edit will eliminate an edge where you did a chamfer later.
And there are always several ways to achieve the wanted result. For solidworks it is the best way to keep the sketches as simple as possible an do the rest with manipulations.

At your rim I would do a rotation feature first, the rest should be done with 2 or three cutting features. At the end do chamfers and roundings.

 

As you have learned already, Rhino is not capable of parametric design.
There is two design principles about Rhino I want to mention:

1) filleting and chamfering is done exclusively at the very, very end on a finished design.
You don't want to fillet in between on a half finished design and have to rebuild everything once you change parts of the model.
Filleting also (although, much, much improved since I started using Rhino 15 years ago) is much more sensitive to correct design than on other systems (I have to do A LOT more manual filleting design than a collaborator I work with often who uses Think 3 for similar design tasks).
You really want to work yourself though all the basic Rhino filleting tutorials which explain a lot of the manual surface based filleting techniques.
I learned these techniques way back with a CAD/CAM software called Tebis (I learned on v3.0 / 3.1) which taught you a lot about how surfaces work and how manual basic design has to be approached.

Rhino is still very picky about basic design guidelines regarding filleting and will plainly fail or refuse certain fillets, which you then have to either redesign the adjoining base elements or fillet by hand.

2) Rhino has a major feature in form of its "CPlane" system which works in a way like Solidworks sketches (minus the parametric functionality).
It is designed that you basically place and align a local coordinate system in any place and any orientation you like to design within this system including 2D sketches, that can be developed into 3D objects, etc
Personally I do not use this system but work another way in Rhino:

Next to it's excellent CPlane system, it's 3D alignment and placement functions do work fantastic.
So I simply tend to sketch within the main coordinate system anywhere in space and then position and align those elements within my model.

You can do either one - some prefer to sketch and work within the actual model, others like to design in elements and "assemble" these elements.

A last point regarding one or the other system - a business really chooses between the different CAD systems based on the needed features, the budget available for workstations, software licenses, tutoring, service cost, … and of course the needs within the ecosystem they are operating in.

The gist is: you work in assemblies, in products with many revisions, collaborating within an ecosystem of a certain preferred CAD system, … then you simply need to work with systems as Solidworks, ProE, Catia, …
You work mainly on single items, prototypes, articles without extensive revisions during product life and you may be on a budget, a system like Rhino suits just fine.

From a learning perspective and preparation for employment in the industry - go learn Solidworks. You understand and handle SW with ease and learning Rhino will be quick and easy - there is a steeper learning curve the other way around.