Auto Targetting in Walkabout Mode

We'll thank Jeff LaSor, Rhino's main developer for display related items, for this tip! When you're inside Walkabout mode (for those who haven't tried it, look it up in the help file), you're usually walking towards an object. It's moreless like you entered a room and Rhino's camera are your eyes (of course it also feels like you are a machine and you can only move forward, backwards or sideways). So as you move, you don't get to see an object as you do in Rhino's normal navigation mode, whereas the camera rotates around a target. To get the advantages of normal navigation mode (rotating around an object) while in Walkabout mode, you can activate Walkabout mode (_Walkabout) > use the arrow keys or MMB to move forward/backwards > and when you get to an object that you would like to rotate around (make sure the white cross in the middle of the screen is on the object) > press the right mouse button and then the left mouse button > and move the mouse around. You can also use CTRL+SHIFT+RMB to shift between both navigation modes.

This is what Jeff calls "auto-targeting"!

Cheers,

- vane

Trimming or splitting surfaces

Trimmed surfaces are sometimes tricky because, once they are trimmed there are certain commands you can't use on the trimmed edges. Useful commands that allow to create or maintain continuity, such as _MatchSrf or _Symmetry become useless. A possible workaround to this issue is, if appropriate to the situation, to _Untrim the trimmed edge and then to _Split the surface using the command line Isocurve option. This option allows you to keep the same geometry structure for your surface. If you turn ctrl pts on (F10), you'll see all points lie on the surface edge. You can erase the unwanted split part of the surface and use any command you want on the resulted surface! Cheers!

Organic Toolbar - Chapter 2

This post is not about the Organic Toolbar, but more about how to replace it! In Chapter 1, we saw how to compress/expand points that were at either side of the Origin (Cplane or World). But if your points are elsewhere, these buttons won't work the expected way. By shift+right clicking on each button, you will see that these are simply macros using the Scale1d command and the Origin as a reference point. Therefore to make it work, when your points are all at one side or the other of the Origin, you can simply use the Scale1d command, finding as an origin point, the midpoint between the points you wish to expand/compress along, and as a scale factor one of the selected points. Cheers!

Organic Toolbar - Chapter 1

The Organic Toolbar is a nice little tool that allows you to move objects in any viewport, in the right direction (x,y,z). So you don't have to worry about having the right viewport activated, as opposed to using the alt+arrow keys. This toolbar contains several buttons, indicating whereas you will move the selected objects in X, Y or Z, up or down, etc. You can find this toolbar in the toolbar list that shows up, when right-clicking in a grey area of the interface. It is specially very useful when point editing. For me, the best ones, are the "Compress along..." or "Expand along..." buttons, that allow you to move 2 or more points equidistantly in the opposite direction or towards each other. Now, beware of having the points you want to compress/expand all at either side of the origin....