Getting Started with Rhino 3D

Contents
1 Getting Started with Rhino
1.1 COMPANY
1.2 COMMUNITY
1.3 COMMANDS
1.4 TUTORIALS
2 Rhino Minimal 101
2.1 Rhino tutorials
2.2 A FEW commands to do a LOT of things
2.2.1 drawing:
2.2.2 measurements:
2.2.3 geometric transformation:
2.2.4 2d-3d-2d:
2.2.5 cutting/expanding:
2.2.6 make many out of one:
2.2.7 housekeeping/getting-around:
3 Relevant Links:
3.1 COMPANY
3.2 COMMUNITY
3.3 COMMANDS
3.4 TUTORIALS
4 Grasshopper for Rhino:
4.1 RESOURCES and TUTORIALS
4.2 EXAMPLE DEFINITIONS
4.3 Critical GH components for getting started:
4.3.1 DRAWING
4.3.2 LISTS and DATA TREES
4.3.3 SURFACE DECOMPOSITION
5 Rhino and Python
5.1 OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION
5.2 WHAT YOU NEED
5.3 LEARNING
5.4 EXAMPLES

Getting Started with Rhino

COMPANY

McNeel: The company that makes Rhino3D
Rhino3D: The main website
Rhino3D Tutorials: The official documentation

COMMUNITY

The Rhino3d wiki: community developed site with all things Rhino
Rhino3d newsgroup: people asking/answering questions

COMMANDS

TUTORIALS

Introduction to Rhino
Getting Started video+annotated tutorials
Rhino and Grasshopper tutorials by DesignReform
Fabrication related tutorials index by CadDigest
Rhino tutorials by Lynda (CMU Students have free access with their Andrew IDs through here)

Rhino Minimal 101

Rhino tutorials

A FEW commands to do a LOT of things

NB 1. When there’s a length or an option, you can type it (if you can)
NB 2. Use a two button mouse, use a big/second screen (if you can)

drawing:

(generally: you can either click to draw or type the dimensions you want)

points
circle
line
rec
polyline
interpcrv
crv

measurements:

length: length of line or curve
distance: distance between two points
area: area of a surface

geometric transformation:

move
copy
rotate
extend: make a curve longer
scale1D: good for resizing lines
scale2D: good for resizing flat shapes
scale (you can indicate with numbers the scaling factor)
mirror: copy/move and rotate; can be used to reflect or flip
arraycrv: orient and copy
orient: good when the thing you’re moving is asymmetric/sided/chiral
offset: scale and copy
fillet: round sharp corners

2d-3d-2d:

planarSrf: turn a closed curve into a surface
loft: make connecting surface between two lines/curves
extrude
make2d: create 2d shape of selected surface, according to current view
unrollSrf: turn a volume into flat components
dupBorders: produce curve from boundary of a surface

cutting/expanding:

explode
split: divides a line/curve/surface at a center point/line/intersective-surf/curv
trim: split + delete
extend
rebuild
curveBooleon

make many out of one:

divide: dividing lines/curves into equal parts
rebuild: either turn cuves into lines or make ugly curves pretty curves

housekeeping/getting-around:

layer: show layers window (use many layers!)
show/hide: select an object and temporary show it or hide it
setPt: set all X and/or Y and/or Z points of a geometry to a new value
zs: zoom set, show you just the selected object in the active transport
join: make one curve/surface out of many segments
explode: separate segements of a curve/surface
group
orientCameraToSurface

Relevant Links:

COMPANY

McNeel: The company that makes Rhino3D
Rhino3D: The main website
Rhino3D Tutorials: The official documentation

COMMUNITY

The Rhino3d wiki: community developed site with all things Rhino
Rhino3d newsgroup: people asking/answering questions

COMMANDS

TUTORIALS

Introduction to Rhino
Getting Started video+annotated tutorials
Rhino and Grasshopper tutorials by DesignReform
Fabrication related tutorials index by CadDigest
Rhino tutorials by Lynda (CMU Students have free access with their Andrew IDs through here)

Grasshopper for Rhino:

Plugin that provides a visual programming environment for parametric design in Rhino

RESOURCES and TUTORIALS

Grasshopper3d: the main site
Grasshopper Tutorials: so many
Grasshopper Primer: the unofficial official starter-tutorial
Mode Lab: Ali’s favorite tutorials
Co-de-it: Excellent set of definitions including paneling, tessellation, combs, vornois
RhinoTuts: Very nice set of video tutorials
Digital Toolbox: tutorial videos and examples from beginner to advanced (no GH definitions provided)
Design Reform: advanced tutorial videos (no GH definitions provided)
Grasshopper Add-ons: additional libraries for GH
Data Tree Manipulations: Excellent overview of components and techniques for working with GH’s data structures

EXAMPLE DEFINITIONS

Here are the Grasshopper intro definitions from class.
Here are the Additional Grasshopper example definitions including the speaker cone from my work A Tentative Call to the Other, the auto-mesh-sectioner and another panelling example.
ExplodeBreps @ UVA: many example definitions for useful things like surface decomposition, tessellation, finger joinery, etc.
Here is Ali’s set of Grasshopper goodies

Critical GH components for getting started:

DRAWING

Point XYZ
Circle
IntCrv
PLine
Divide
Loft

LISTS and DATA TREES

range
series
flatten
list length
item
shift
reverse
split
cull nth and cull pattern

SURFACE DECOMPOSITION

Divide (Domain 2)
SubSrf
Explode

Rhino and Python

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION

WHAT YOU NEED

OS X: Installation Instructions
Windows: download the latest Rhino 5

LEARNING

Python for Rhino 101 Primer: unofficial official get-started guide
DiveIntoPython.net: portal for learning python
Basic Tutorials: from python.rhino3d.com
Jose Sanchez has some great Rhino + Python tutorials on Vimeo
PointCrowd.com: Rhino + Python educational portal by Ari Kardasis and Masoud Akbarzadeh of MIT MediaLab (lots of great sample code here)

EXAMPLES

Class Examples: a few simple scripts I showed in class, some adopted from the above sources
Rhinoscript > RhinoCommon < IronPython: McNeel pages on the conbination of Rhino.NET + Rhino.Common + Python with lots of great sample code here, particularly for RhinoCommon

Tags: F14