[1.] Another year, another Castle.

January 18, 2024

[1.] Another year, another Castle.

Hey ya'll, it's been a minute.

For this week's assignment using the new and shiny Rhino 8, we had to create an original model of a castle by using the basic Rhino commands and tools to create objects and adding material/textures for rendering to make it pretty.

For this project, some of the commands I used and experimented with were:

For Curves:

[ExtrudeCrv] extrudes a curve.
[Loft]
[AlignCrvtoSrf] aligns a curve to a surface.
[CloseCrv] closes open curves.
[Offset] makes an offset copy of a curve.

For Curves & Surfaces/Polysurfaces:

[Join][Trim][Explode][Split]
[Array] copies and spaces out objects in a grid. [ArrayLinear] arrays in one direction. [ArrayPolar] copies objects in a circle.
[Align][Move][Rotate][Rotate3D][Copy]

For Surfaces/Polysurfaces:

[Taper]
[Shear]
[Revolve]
[ExtrudeSrf][ExtendSrf][ConnectSrf]
[BooleanUnion][BooleanSplit]
[Cap] caps open surfaces.
[Fillet]
[OffsetSrf] makes an offset copy of a surface.

These commands are always helpful:

[Check] checks if the objects are valid, really useful for meshes and 3D printing - it can sus out if there's any breaks or holes in the object or if it has any issues.
[Ctrl/Cmd+A][ZS] selects all/zooms selected.
[Save] always save!
[History] checks your file and command history - helpful for troubleshooting.
[Untrim] removes any trimmed surfaces after using [Trim].
[Group][Ungroup] groups and ungroups objects.
[Lock]{Unlock] locks and unlocks objects.

A few other commands I experimented with but still getting the hang of were:
[Drape] which makes a surface over other objects, has a fabric effect.
[Tween] creates a new curve by dividing the midway point between two curves.
[Chamfer] is similar to [Fillet], instead of connecting with two surfaces with a round edge, it connects with an angular edge and trims or extends the curves to meet eachother.

Instead of using [BooleanUnion] to join my spheres for the cloud, a better command would have been [CurveBoolean] which joins the surfaces, and trims/removes all the excess from anything overlapping.

One of the two hurdles I came across while building the castle, was the switch between previously using Rhino 7 on Windows, to now using Rhino 8 and consistently switching between Mac and Windows 💀. The new interface for Rhino 8 does feel way more user friendly and less visually cluttered compared to Rhino 7. Biggest crux overall with Rhino 7/8 for me is keeping my objects level with the CPlane, keeping my CPlane/camera oriented, and the camera panning without spinning out into oblivion.

Anyways I decided to trust the process on this one, and ended up with a Castle in a cloud.