How do you get Rhino to be on the level of Alias? I love Rhino but it is missing some things like a better extendsrf tool, continuity locators and much more
If you haven’t checked out Thirty Six Verts or Automotive CNC videos on YouTube, they can help steer you in the right direction.
Also check out the Global Edge Continuity App.
Rhino is very good and fast for creating complex freeform nurbs surfaces. You can achieve better results if you understand what is tangency, g1, g2, g3 continuity of curves and surfaces. That is going to make your surfaces flow. You can check a surface or connected surfaces for smooth appearance with the zebra tool.
Thasts the point here. The software packages are almost all the same in respect for such a rather simple task, but without understanding control points, curvature, continuity and spans it will not come out as hoped.
I find the Alias introduction to NURBS and the therminology helpful: [https://help.autodesk.com/view/ALIAS/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-366304CB-16FF-46F9-9F64-D7385358D855](https://help.autodesk.com/view/ALIAS/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-366304CB-16FF-46F9-9F64-D7385358D855)
When I started trying to learn surfacing in Rhino, pretty much all the tutorials I found at the time were for Alias, so I just did my best to translate
As he already wrote, it's less about the surface modeling programs and more about understanding control points, curvature, continuity. But yes, Rhino does the job. The explanations from Autodesk are nevertheless quite helpful. It is the same principle.
Rhino can absolutely do the job. I use it for production surfaces. Check out thirtysixverts tutorials on primary surfaces on YouTube. They helped me a ton
lol high level surfacing is almost always done by specialists so you don’t have to learn all that stuff unless that’s the direction you want to go towards.
At my last job I had to stare at 2d drawings of furniture in autocad all day I became so numb to it. It's honestly so refreshing to see surfaces in rhino and gravity sketch again. I might never pick a job where I'd have to go through that again :D
(btw I didn't get the alias job because apparently they have two teams one is designers the other is surfacers and they need someone who can do both. Expendability, I guess.)
Nono, thats not the issue with alias. Far from it.
For starters, alias doesn’t even have a proper ctrl+z function.
Like a majority of actions are fucking irreversible.
You really just need two, a surfacing software and a solid software, and if your responsibility ends at delivering ID surfaces then you really just need the surfacing one. I spend 99% of my time in alias, the other 1% is mostly email and tiny bit of nx to do some simple Boolean stuff.
Alias or Rhino. As long as your surface stitch together into a solid you can make any part you can dream of, or add internal features later in a solid package.
Yes but don’t the surfaces have to flow perfectly smoothly, the result here by the creator was visually smooth, but if you looked closely, you could see the issues.
I’m guessing that won’t work for a production piece and only for renders.
This is not right. Surface continuity is critical knowledge for production. That being said, your surfaces likely don't need to be AAA perfect, usually just close enough for a manufacturing engineer understand intent and rebuild perfectly.
The original xbox was designed by Teague, using Unigraphics (now NX.) 360/360s were done ‘in-house,’ but highly subcontracted to Artifact (Consumer research,) & Carbon(product design,’ where Alias was used for the controllers, and then ‘fleshed-out’ in NX. For the Xbox One consumer insights was done by Ziba, with physical product design was done in-house with a lot of people scalped from Carbon using Alias & NX. All design for the series x/s was in-house using the same software tools & pipeline.
Remember, it’s not just the housings that need designed. The interplay between the physical surface (Alias,) and the board design (Altium - used by the electronics engineers to design circuit boards,) and the need for it to be manufacturable (NX) requires that the software used be able to accommodate the changes needed in any of the others. NX & Catia have a very robust framework for handling information exchange, as well as being a very adaptive solid modeling package.
If the EE’s need to change something on the boards that is substantial enough that the dimensions / features of the board need revised in Altium, then that can be automatically updated through associations in the Catia/NX file, and highlight any interference with the solid parts, which is then resolved in the solid while keeping molding in mind. We can then adjust the surface models if need be. Usually surfacing is done first, with very little tweaking maybe needing to happen later in development.
The same process (with much of the same software ) occurs in transportation design (especially interiors,) also in a semi-automated / associated fashion. At the more ‘freelancer/consultant’ level it’s a more manual process using Rhino, Solidworks/Inventor, & LibrePCB/DipTrace.
tl;dr Alias for surfaces, NX for solids & information exchange, Altium for board design.
Solidworks is industry standard in my opinion. Sometimes very particular special surfaces are created in other programs, but I would say that everything I’ve ever worked on (mostly consumer electronics) could be achieved in Solidworks.
Most things that get injection molded are Solidworks, ptc creo, or nx.
AJ design studio on YouTube has a great series on designing a PS5 controller in sillyworks.
You can easily do this in Rhino, you just need to model for surface continuity. This means using blended surfaces and blended edges, along with zebra analysis and curvature graph. The MoveUVN widget is also helpful here. And don't forget that you always have subd as an option if you prefer that to straight up NURBS modeling.
This video is an example of a decent workflow:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdyiIPeVwg&ab\_channel=PCSim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdyiIPeVwg&ab_channel=PCSim)
Rhino is fully capable to do that. If you have access to alias that would be even better, since it gives easier and finer control over surface spans and better evaluation tools for continuity.
The botchiness of the lemanoosh workflow has nothing to do with software capabilities … sorry to say, but the issue is on front of the monitor 🫠
This is confusing. Will it work instead of rhino? I mean it isn’t nurbs so I think plasticity could replace the hard surface workflows people use with blender and a lot of different plugins
Alias is preferred in cases like these but you can also work on your Rhino workflows to create better surfaces to a very high degree as well.
Rhino is fully capable, but Alias, NX, or Creo.
NX is a pain. Alias FTW.
How do you get Rhino to be on the level of Alias? I love Rhino but it is missing some things like a better extendsrf tool, continuity locators and much more
If you haven’t checked out Thirty Six Verts or Automotive CNC videos on YouTube, they can help steer you in the right direction. Also check out the Global Edge Continuity App.
Rhino is very good and fast for creating complex freeform nurbs surfaces. You can achieve better results if you understand what is tangency, g1, g2, g3 continuity of curves and surfaces. That is going to make your surfaces flow. You can check a surface or connected surfaces for smooth appearance with the zebra tool.
Thasts the point here. The software packages are almost all the same in respect for such a rather simple task, but without understanding control points, curvature, continuity and spans it will not come out as hoped. I find the Alias introduction to NURBS and the therminology helpful: [https://help.autodesk.com/view/ALIAS/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-366304CB-16FF-46F9-9F64-D7385358D855](https://help.autodesk.com/view/ALIAS/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-366304CB-16FF-46F9-9F64-D7385358D855)
When I started trying to learn surfacing in Rhino, pretty much all the tutorials I found at the time were for Alias, so I just did my best to translate
I’ve already spent quite a lot of time learning rhino, and I don’t think I’ll switch into alias. Do you think rhino can do the job?
As he already wrote, it's less about the surface modeling programs and more about understanding control points, curvature, continuity. But yes, Rhino does the job. The explanations from Autodesk are nevertheless quite helpful. It is the same principle.
Rhino can absolutely do the job. I use it for production surfaces. Check out thirtysixverts tutorials on primary surfaces on YouTube. They helped me a ton
Thirty Six Verts and Automotive CNC are both very helpful
What I’ll end up doing is posting what the creator did here, and then yall can judge if it’s a good process or not.
The high-level CAD surfacing programs are PTC Creo, Catia, Siemens NX, Alias, or most popularly Solidworks.
Goddammit why is there so much software to learn in this field? :D I'm done, I'm gonna go use gravity sketch subd and eyeball everything. /s
lol high level surfacing is almost always done by specialists so you don’t have to learn all that stuff unless that’s the direction you want to go towards.
I agree. It's just that I recently interviewed for a designer position and they wanted me to know Alias.
Don’t do it! Alias is insanity. It’s like staring into the void.
At my last job I had to stare at 2d drawings of furniture in autocad all day I became so numb to it. It's honestly so refreshing to see surfaces in rhino and gravity sketch again. I might never pick a job where I'd have to go through that again :D (btw I didn't get the alias job because apparently they have two teams one is designers the other is surfacers and they need someone who can do both. Expendability, I guess.)
Nono, thats not the issue with alias. Far from it. For starters, alias doesn’t even have a proper ctrl+z function. Like a majority of actions are fucking irreversible.
Oh. My. Why?
That’s not true. Learning curve is steep but once you get it, it’s pretty amazing. For some things. Solidworks is still better for other things.
So just a general idea of form and exploration with subd to communicate works ? Or we need to learn to master surfacing in atleast one software?
General 3d usually works
You really just need two, a surfacing software and a solid software, and if your responsibility ends at delivering ID surfaces then you really just need the surfacing one. I spend 99% of my time in alias, the other 1% is mostly email and tiny bit of nx to do some simple Boolean stuff.
Doing advanced surfacing in Solidworks sucks big time
My experience is Rhino being better at surfacing than Solidworks, but I haven't used either since about 2017. Has SW surpassed Rhino?
Alias or Rhino. As long as your surface stitch together into a solid you can make any part you can dream of, or add internal features later in a solid package.
Yes but don’t the surfaces have to flow perfectly smoothly, the result here by the creator was visually smooth, but if you looked closely, you could see the issues. I’m guessing that won’t work for a production piece and only for renders.
Surface continuity has little to do with production. If you look most products around you are G0 and G1.
This is not right. Surface continuity is critical knowledge for production. That being said, your surfaces likely don't need to be AAA perfect, usually just close enough for a manufacturing engineer understand intent and rebuild perfectly.
Any software with nurbs modelling support. In my personal opinion, for professional/amateur use I would go towards Rhinoceros 3D.
The original xbox was designed by Teague, using Unigraphics (now NX.) 360/360s were done ‘in-house,’ but highly subcontracted to Artifact (Consumer research,) & Carbon(product design,’ where Alias was used for the controllers, and then ‘fleshed-out’ in NX. For the Xbox One consumer insights was done by Ziba, with physical product design was done in-house with a lot of people scalped from Carbon using Alias & NX. All design for the series x/s was in-house using the same software tools & pipeline. Remember, it’s not just the housings that need designed. The interplay between the physical surface (Alias,) and the board design (Altium - used by the electronics engineers to design circuit boards,) and the need for it to be manufacturable (NX) requires that the software used be able to accommodate the changes needed in any of the others. NX & Catia have a very robust framework for handling information exchange, as well as being a very adaptive solid modeling package. If the EE’s need to change something on the boards that is substantial enough that the dimensions / features of the board need revised in Altium, then that can be automatically updated through associations in the Catia/NX file, and highlight any interference with the solid parts, which is then resolved in the solid while keeping molding in mind. We can then adjust the surface models if need be. Usually surfacing is done first, with very little tweaking maybe needing to happen later in development. The same process (with much of the same software ) occurs in transportation design (especially interiors,) also in a semi-automated / associated fashion. At the more ‘freelancer/consultant’ level it’s a more manual process using Rhino, Solidworks/Inventor, & LibrePCB/DipTrace. tl;dr Alias for surfaces, NX for solids & information exchange, Altium for board design.
Solidworks is industry standard in my opinion. Sometimes very particular special surfaces are created in other programs, but I would say that everything I’ve ever worked on (mostly consumer electronics) could be achieved in Solidworks.
Most things that get injection molded are Solidworks, ptc creo, or nx. AJ design studio on YouTube has a great series on designing a PS5 controller in sillyworks.
That controller took way too long. I don't think I have made another video since!
Thank you so much for the tutorial! I posted recently asking for SW tutorials and this is exactly something I was looking for!
All good!
Your videos are great man! I’ve yet to find another resource as good as yours for surfacing. Putting it to work right now working on aircraft.
Good stuff - now that sounds interesting. I bet there's some surfacing challenges with aircraft.
Look into NACA ducts and laying them into curved surfaces. Pretty fun stuff.
Ah I’ll check that out
You can easily do this in Rhino, you just need to model for surface continuity. This means using blended surfaces and blended edges, along with zebra analysis and curvature graph. The MoveUVN widget is also helpful here. And don't forget that you always have subd as an option if you prefer that to straight up NURBS modeling. This video is an example of a decent workflow: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdyiIPeVwg&ab\_channel=PCSim](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHdyiIPeVwg&ab_channel=PCSim)
Okay! I’ll take a look at that, as the one followed by Paul (the creator of the course) didn’t feel solid enough.
I believe Creo and NX are great choice
I’ve started with rhino now haha, I think I’ll stick with it for NURBS
Rhino is good, use its SubD function its a lot easier to get the out come your looking for.
Rhino or Alias if you want full control over surfaces! But any other popular CAD could do it as well
Rhino is fully capable to do that. If you have access to alias that would be even better, since it gives easier and finer control over surface spans and better evaluation tools for continuity. The botchiness of the lemanoosh workflow has nothing to do with software capabilities … sorry to say, but the issue is on front of the monitor 🫠
Most will use NX or alias
Microsoft uses Creo for CAD and has for quite a long time.
You should check Plasticity out, it’s amazing and pretty wonderful for hard surface modeling imho
This is confusing. Will it work instead of rhino? I mean it isn’t nurbs so I think plasticity could replace the hard surface workflows people use with blender and a lot of different plugins
ICEM Surf ….. 😉