Rhino: My Way

AO_Template_080725.zip

AO_Toolbars_080725.zip

AO_Viewmodes_080725.zip

I’ve created a collection of viewing modes, preferences, tool bars, and templates to help make Rhino easier to use. Here’s the deal:

You don’t have to work with me for long before learning that I’m not exactly a “Rhino guy.” In fact, I’ve traditionally pretty much hated Rhino. Why waste time on useless data that can’t be changed, when you could be building with a parametric app?

Well, I figured that the answer to that question can only be learned by doing. I’ve never really learned Rhino well because I’ve always been so frustrated by it, so I attended a Rhino training course at McNeal Miami this week, and though the class itself was very basic, the opportunity to spend time in the software was very helpful to me.

One of the most frustrating things about Rhino, I find, is that there are far too many tools. It’s not a good thing: they’d be better off having one powerful “extrude” command than the twelve various commands they have now.

My way of getting around this was to create toolbars that organize the tools in a much cleaner, easier-to-read way. I hate dealing with cryptic icons, though they are helpful at a glance, so I like to use both text and icons to get the best of both worlds. I’ve also added some custom tools, like X Y and Z flavors of the “mirror” and “setpt” commands, making them much faster to use in daily practice.

One toolbar change I made that is bound to stir up controversy is the removal of all right-click functions on “top-level” tools, or tools that have popup menus beneath them. This makes it much quicker to access nested tools, and much more predictable. The right-click functions are all still available in the resulting pop-up menus.

I’ve used F1, F2, and F3 to change CPlane orientations on the fly while in perspective mode.

I also really dislike the default visualization modes in Rhino. I quickly found that it’s not Rhino itself that’s the problem, it’s just the way it’s configured that’s the problem. I’ve created some custom view modes that work better for me, based on “Material” rather than layer color. I find it makes organizing the file much easier.

The one thing these lack as of today are all of my custom scripts, which I’ll have to add to this distro at a later date. More to come soon!