3D Printing With Rhino: Preparing Your Rhinoceros 3D Model for 3D Printing
- Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorials
- Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial Software
- Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial For Beginners
Rhinoceros, or short Rhino, is a powerful and versatile modeling software for creating 3D designs. When you’re looking to 3D print your Rhino model, some points are very important to keep in mind: it needs to be watertight, exported correctly, and have the right wall thicknesses. While this might sound complicated, Kyle Houchens, an expert at preparing a Rhino 3D model for 3D printing, will show you how it’s done. In this step-by-step video tutorial, he will show you what kind of models are perfect for 3D printing and how you can identify and fix common mistakes.
Kyle has years of experience in 3D modeling and will be your instructor in this video series. He is also the owner of ‘The Outside’, a digital design consultancy specialized in 3D modeling, photo-realistic rendering, and finding solutions to any design problem.
So let’s prep our Rhino3D model for 3D printing!
1: Checking if your 3D Model is Watertight in Rhino
Kyle introduces the concept of a watertight model. Sometimes it’s also called a manifold model. Creating a watertight model literally means that no water could flow out of the model if it was being filled up. Kyle compares a watertight model to a water balloon. If you fill up a water balloon with water and tie the top of it and no water comes out, then that’s watertight. For 3D printing, creating a watertight model is a very important step.
This video describes a simple 3D modeling process using 2D orthographic line drawings. I introduce several basic modeling techniques such as extrusion, mirro. I used Rhino for 20 years and also work as an industrial designer in the aerospace industry for one of the largest aircraft manufacturers in the world for the last 17 years. In the first couple of weeks I will show you step by step on how to get around in Rhino 3D and use basic 2D and 3D tools.
The best way to find out whether your 3D model is watertight or not is with the ‘select open poly-surfaces’, ‘select bad objects’, and ‘edge analysis’ tools. In this first video clip, Kyle explains why these tools are so essential for creating a 3D printable model.
2: Creating a Polygon Mesh with the Right Tolerance in Rhino
In Rhino, you create an NURBS model, however, 3D printers print Polygon meshes. NURBS is a mathematical model whereas Polygon meshes are a collection of vertices, edges, and faces that define the model.
Critical to controlling the quality of your 3D printable model is how the model is meshed. Kyle will talk about how to control the mesh output in Rhino to an STL file and how to set units and tolerances in order to ensure a high-quality 3D print.
![Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial](https://images.g2crowd.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=366,height=180,fit=scale-down,format=auto,onerror=redirect,/https://images.g2crowd.com/uploads/attachment/file/11086/rhino3.jpg)
There is more than one way to control the mesh settings. In the following video, Kyle covers some of the other mesh settings, including the ‘Check’ tool, which may be useful as you convert your models to a mesh for printing.
3: Advanced Mesh Repair: Fixing Non-Watertight 3D Models in Rhino
In the first video, we learned how to see if your 3D model is watertight or not. Now, Kyle has created a non-watertight model and shows you which strategies you can use to fix the model and make it watertight.
You’ll notice that there are multiple ways of making your object printable in the following video clip.
4: Setting Wall Thickness and Hollowing a 3D Model in Rhino
Not all models are supposed to be 3D printed solid. Sensei 1 1 3 0. Instead, they might be hollow inside and have walls with a certain thickness. Setting a wall thickness is important for 3D printing – if surfaces are paper-thin a printer wouldn’t have any information about how thick or how thin the surface is supposed to be.
That’s why Kyle will show you how to create hollow 3D models with a certain wall thickness.
![Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – versatile 3d modeler tutorial download Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – versatile 3d modeler tutorial download](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/oIJOrM9iwBw/maxresdefault.jpg)
Should you create a hollow model or not? Kyle says that it depends mainly on the size of your model. A model of his car that is just a few centimeters or inches long will work perfectly fine as a solid model. However, if this model was a bigger size, printing it solid would increase 3D printing costs significantly and (depending on the material) might even risk deformation of the print.
As a 3D print gets larger, you may want to hollow out the part to use less material. Flavours 2 lite (224) download free. Kyle shows his methods of creating hollow parts in this last video.
Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorials
5: 3D Printing Your Rhino Model
Now that your mesh is ready to go to the printer, you can upload it to our website, choose a 3D printing material, and let us take care of printing it for you.
Before you order your print, make sure to make yourself familiar with the 3D printing material of your choice. Each and every material is different and requires different minimum wall thicknesses, minimal detail sizes, etc. We put together a selection of design guides for the most popular 3D printing materials that will help you to create a great 3D model.
If you still need more information, make sure to take a look at our tutorial on how to cut costs for your next 3D printing project and which 5 modeling mistakes you need to avoid.
Featured image: Rhino 3D model by Mark Florquin.
In this tutorial I will go through modeling this simple house in Rhinoceros without using any plugins like VisualARQ. In this first part we will model the base shape of the house from Autocad plans.
Introduction
Before we even start modeling we need Autocad plans of a house. I’ve taken dwg files and saved it as 3dm (native Rhino file format). You can download it here:
If you like, or if you get stuck with some step, you can download each step individually here:
step 1
step 3
step 5
final
STEP 1
Ok, in this first step we will be setting up our plans in 3D space. Actually we will align each view plan to our viewport in Rhino. But first, we need to group all the lines from each view and put them in a separate layer. Just so we don’t get big pile of curves in one layer, that way we wouldn’t be able to control anything. Organizing in layers is always a great idea because we can easily hide whole layer or lock it.
Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial Software
Ok, so lets start. First create a new layer named Plans and move all other layouts (except Default) inside Plans layers.
Now we need separate layers for our views. We need 4 side views and one top. So go on and create new layers (top, front, left, right, back).You should have something like on the image 2.
image 2
Next thing to do is to group each view and put the lines in its layers accordingly.
image 4
We need to orient our blueprints so they fit in every viewport in Rhino, right now they are all oriented the same way visible in Top view. We will be using RemapCPlane command to do this, so we don’t have to rotate, Rhino can do that for us. So, lets start with Front view. To do so, click on the Front group of curves (or layer) from Top viewport and run RemapCPlane and click anywhere inside front viewport. You should get the same situation like on image 5 below.
Using Move tool and with help of Osnap (End option would be enough, but just to be sure you can check Intersection too. Near could be a little confusing) we will position our front layer in right place according to our top layer (check image 6).
image 6
We will do this same step for all other views, so we get a “house” made of plans. Sort of. Note: when using RemapCPlane for other views (groups of curves) make sure you use the right viewport and cplane. For example, if you want to remap back layer you will have to select it, run the RemapCPlane and click anywhere on Back viewport. Since Back (or left) viewport is not active by default, you can click on any of 4 viewport names with right mouse button, then Set View, and there you can choose which viewport to use. Just remember, For back group of curves you need back viewport, for right group of curves you need right viewport, and the same applies for left, front and even top.
I don’t think this should be very hard to setup, and once you do, you will have something like on the image 7 below.
Rhinoceros 5 4 1 – Versatile 3d Modeler Tutorial For Beginners
And note the orientation of the letters above groups. That should give you pretty good idea of how well you did to recreate this.
Pages:123