Form vs.

Shape 1
James Carruthers

3rd Edition Advanced 3D Modeling with

Rhinoceros®
NURBS modeling for Windows
©2005 Hydraulic Design
Rhinoceros is a registered trademark of Robert McNeel & Associates
 Form vs. Shape 1

Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Basic Shapes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Logo Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Tunnel Edges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Tunnel Surface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Tunnel Alternate Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Tunnel Alternate Sweep1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Tunnel Alternate Sweep2 NetworkSrf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Tunnel Alternate Point Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Refining Brim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Finishing Outer Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Shelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
 Form vs. Shape 1

Introduction
The main theme of this tutorial is how there are
multiple solutions to any modeling challenge you
might encounter and evaluating the suitability of
different approaches depending on the purpose
of the model. Different techniques might be
used when modeling for manufacturing as
opposed to illustration, and different techniques
are more commonly used when ‘Designing’ as
opposed to ‘modeling.’ There’s more than one
way to skin a hat.
This is an ‘advanced’ tutorial. It is intended to be
easy to follow, but the emphasis here is on what
NURBS and Rhinoceros can do, not necessarily
how to execute every command prompt-by-
prompt. The Evaluation version of Rhino includes
a number of basic tutorials to help you get
started. Commands are referred to by the name
used for typed entry and are Highlighted .

Getting Started
1. Start a New file
using the Millimeters
template
2. Open the
DocumentProperties
dialog.
3. On the Units page,
set the tolerance as
shown.

Choice of tolerance can have a big impact on how much trouble you’re
going to run into with modeling and with downstream operations if
manufacturing is your goal. The tolerance chosen here, is quite "relaxed,"
to avoid unnecessary hassle.


 Form vs. Shape 1

4. Go to the Mesh
page, select Custom,
and try these settings.
You may want to
adjust them based on
your
horsepower.

Optimum meshing settings can vary greatly from project to project, even
for different objects in the same project. These settings make it easy to
drastically change the polygon count by adjusting just 2 values, Min edge
length and Max dist, edge to srf, and on this particular object do a good job
of capturing subtle surface contours with a low polygon count, albeit at the
expense of the accuracy of tiny details like fillets[illustrate]. Greater
accuracy would be required for STL output, but reducing the polygon count
in long skinny surfaces (like fillets) is key to improving the speed of your
shaded views.

5. On the Grid page,

set these options.


 Form vs. Shape 1

7. In Rhino V3 SR4, on the WebBrowser page you can associate a web

page with a file that you can view in a browser window "on top" of Rhino.
To use this feature, enter the location of the tutorial index, which would be
"your_CD_drive_letter:\index.htm" and check the options as shown. The
next time you open the file, the tutorial will "pop up" in it's own window.

8. On the Modeling
Aids page, adjust the
nudging settings as
shown.
9. Exit the dialog.


 Form vs. Shape 1

Basic Shapes
Nomenclature
There are 4 main
features to this ‘hard
hat’ that will be
Tunnel
referred to during this
tutorial.
Shell
Logo Panel

Brim

(0,-1,0)

1. Create an Ellipsoid for the main surface with 2. Make another Ellipsoid centered at world
axis lengths of 7, 8, and 9 units, centered about coordinates (0, - 1, 0). It's axis lengths are 11,
11 , 7. 5,
the world origin. and 9. This is for the outer edge of the brim.


 Form vs. Shape 1

3. In the Right view,

draw a Curve of
Degree 3 representing
the top of the outer
edge of the brim.

(-3.5,1.0) (6.0,1.0) (11.0,1.0)

(-12.5,-1.5).

4. Make another
Curve for the bottom
edge of the brim.

(-4.0,-0.5) (3.7,-0.5)

(11.6,-1.9)

(-12.3,-2.2).

5. Select the curves, It doesn't matter if

start Trim,
Trim and trim you pick the objects
off the top and to trim in a
bottom of the larger perspective or side
ellipsoid. view, when the curves
are flat that is what
determines the
direction of the trim.


 Form vs. Shape 1

6. Trim the main

surface with the lower
curve, just for now.

7. Hide the brim trim curves.

8. Extrude using the ToPoint Mode, the edge of
the brim to a point 2mm above and 1mm head
of the centre point.

(-1,2)

9. Join the extruded

surface to the outer
brim.


 Form vs. Shape 1

Logo Panel
1. Draw a Curve for
the profile of the logo
panel
(-8.2,5.2)

(-9.2,2.3)

(-9.6,-0.9)

2. ExtrudeCrv the curve in Straight Mode using

the BothSides option by 5 units.
3. Delete the curve just extruded.

4. Use ChangeDegree on the logo panel surface

and raise it's Degree to 5 in both directions.
5. Turn on its control points.


 Form vs. Shape 1

4. Nudge these points

back 2. 5 units.

5. Nudge these points

forward 0. 5 units.

6. Finish by nudging
these points back 0. 5
units.


 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Draw a Curve for the front profile of the logo

panel
(0,5.0) (2.5,5.0)

(3.3,2.0)

(3.4,-1.0)

8. Mirror the curve

about the Y axis.
9. Join the curve
halves.

9. Join the curve

halves.
10.
10 . Trim off the logo
panel surface.

10
 Form vs. Shape 1

11.
11 . Draw a CutPlane through the logo panel
along the world Y axis.

Of course in this case it would have been just as

easy to draw a Plane in a side view, but this is
one of those commands you may find handy
sometimes but not think of using.

12.
12 . Split the logo
panel with the plane.

13.
13. Select half of the
split panel and hit
Copy.
Copy

11
 Form vs. Shape 1

14.
14 . Undo the splitting 15.
15 . Paste the half We did this little loop-d-loop because we're going
operation. panel surface. to work on a susequent surface in half and want
a single edge to snap to and use as a boundary.
It will be discarded later. I use this often to have
a copy of an object that gets changed and have
an alias to "!_CopyToClipboard _Undo _Paste."
The underscores let this alias work in non-
english versions of Rhino.

16.
16 . Hide the full panel surface for now.
17.
17 . Delete the CutPlane surface and the curve
used to trim the panel.

12
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Edges
1. In the Top view, draw a Curve of Degree 3 (2.0,10.0)
that will describe the edge where the 'tunnel'
meets the main surface.

(2.0,0.0)
(2.0,-1.0)

(2.0,-5.2)

(3.8,-8.0)

2. Project this curve onto the main surface and

check. It’s fairly important that it match what’s
here closely.

13
 Form vs. Shape 1

3. Hide the projected curve. We will refer to this

later as the 'tunnel edge curve.'
4. Hide the brim polysurface.

5. Draw another (1.55,8.83)

(-3.7, 8.5)
Curve for the side
profile of the tunnel. (6.4,7.0)

(-6.8,6.6)

End Snap

(9.16,3.6)

(9.2,0.4)

6. Extrude in Straight Mode the side profile

curve a couple of units.

Constructing the tunnel surface tangent to this

edge will ensure that the mirrored halves of the
tunnel will be G2(curvature continuous)to each
other.

14
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Use ShowEdges with the All Edges option on

the main surface to find the seam of the original
ellipsoid. The Thick lines for edges and seams
option under the AdvancedDisplay settings, used
for the screen shots in this tutorial, also shows
surface seams.
Compare the position of the seam to the top
profile curve. If it looks like this, do step 8.

8. If needed, Mirror the main surface about the

world Y axis with the Copy option set to No.
No

This was not a critical step in this situation, but

it can be a good idea to avoid the surprise down
the road of finding what you thought was one
edge is actually split across a surface seam.

9. In the Top or Perspective view, Trim the main

surface with the top profile curve.

15
 Form vs. Shape 1

10.
10 . In the Side view,
draw a Line snapping
to the End of the side
profile curve and the
corner of the logo
End Snap
panel.

End Snap

11.
11 . Trim the bottom off the main surface with
the line in a side view.
12.
12 . Delete the line.

End Snap

(3.54,-8.07)

End Snap

13.
13 . Draw a small Curve,
Curve snapping between the
corner of the logo panel and the main surface.
Use the Planar Osnap to place the middle point
approximately with the mouse.

16
 Form vs. Shape 1

(1.25,Y aligned with

End Snap first point)

End Snap

14.
14 . Make another Curve between the corners of
the side profile surface and the main surface. To
place the middle point, hold SHIFT to use the
Ortho Osnap then you can place it by eye or use
the Grid Snap to place it close and nudge it.

17
 Form vs. Shape 1

You can probably visualize the sort of surface we

want to have within the area enclosed by these
edges and curves.
What makes this tricky is that it has 5 "sides"
and of course one of the basic properties and of
NURBS is that they are 4-sided. This means one
of two things: the surface will have to be
trimmed or it will have to be created with more
than one surface.
There are a number of ways to tackle a problem
like this, depending on the purpose of the model
and your ‘design intent,’ which boils down to
what features--edges, dimensions, curves--are
'critical,' what's most precisely specified.
In this contrived example, we’ve decided that the
15.
15 . Hide the top profile curve. edges and curves around this surface are
critical, so we have to build a surface or
surfaces that ‘fills in’ this ‘hole,’ matching those
edges very accurately.
We’ll first use the technique I finally chose to
follow through given the hypothetical
requirements, then present a number of
alternate approaches that might come to
mind(not necessarily that would work, but which
you might think of trying)in this kind of situation.
Surface modeling seems to have it’s own version
of the Uncertainty Principle from quantum
mechanics. The more you try to nail down the
edges of a particular surface, the harder it is to
directly control the actual section of the surface,
and vice versa. And in general the more curves
you create to feed into the surface creation
commands, the better the chance you’re going
to wind up with a mess.

18
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Surface
1. In a side view,
draw a Line.
Line
(-8,5,7.5)

(-5.0,3.0)

2. Use SplitEdge the

edge of the side
profile surface at the
intersection of the
line using the Int
osnap. Int snap

3. Run SplitEdge
again and split the
edge of the shell
where it intersects the
line in the Right view.
4. Delete the line
Int snap drawin in step 1.

19
 Form vs. Shape 1

The locations to split the edges were determined

pretty much by trial-and-error.

5. Build a surface with Sweep 2, matching

Tangency to the side profile surface. Use the Do
Not Simplify cross-section curve option.

Rail
Surface Edge
Match Tangency

Rail
Surface
Edge

Section
Curve

6. Use SplitEdge on
the edge of the label
face, splitting it about
where shown by eye.

20
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Sweep 2 again,
matching Curvature to
the end of the
previous sweep.

Section Rail
Curve Surface Edge
Match Curvature

Rail
Surface
Edge

8. Create a NetworkSrf , matching Curvature to

the end of the last sweep. Make sure to only
Surface Edge
match Position to the other edges. Curvature Match

Surface
Edge
Surface
Edge

Curve

21
 Form vs. Shape 1

9. Inspect what your

have built using Zebra
and/or Emap.
Emap

The transitions between the surfaces look good--it may not appear perfect
from every angle in the analysis modes, but it's sufficient for most real-
world purposes and certainly within the relatively 'relaxed' tolerance
settings.
There obviously is a problem within the Network surface. Without any
interior sections to ‘tell NetworkSrf what to do’ and only one edge
curvature constraint, that’s what happens, plus Network surfaces tend to
‘sag’ between the sections.
It would certainly be possible to repair with with point-editing, but doing so
while maintaining continuity can be tedious.

When I built this using the "Work In Progress"

version of Rhinoceros V4, the Network surface
shown here actually turned out much better and
would require just minor point-editing.

22
 Form vs. Shape 1

10.
10 . Undo or Delete the Network surface.
Rail
11.
11 . Replace it with a Sweep 2 surface.
Surface Edge
Match Curvature

Rail
Rail Surface
Surface Edge
Edge

Rail
Curve

If we were to switch around the ‘rails’ and the

‘sections,’ as at right, the result is cleaner, but
not what we are looking for because it does not
have continuity to the sweep.

12.
12 . With ExtractIsocurve , get 2 curves from the
surface, one near the middle, one near the top.
Make sure the curve at the top is relatively
straight and smooth, showing no signs of the
‘ripple’ further down, we don’t want to have to
adjust it.

13.
13 . Delete the surface.

23
 Form vs. Shape 1

14.
14 . Delete control
points from the
middle curve until
there are only 3.

15.
15 . Move the end point of the curve along the 16.
16 . Tweak the middle point in the top view.
edge of the shell using the Near snap until it's
approximately in line with the other wo points..

24
 Form vs. Shape 1

17.
17 . Create a new NetworkSrf including the 2
new interior section curves. Use the default Surface Edge
Curvature Match
tolerances.
18.
18 . Hide the side profile surface.
19.
19 . Delete the interior section curves.

Surface
Surface Edge
Edge

Curve

The result should look something like this, much

improved.

25
 Form vs. Shape 1

20.
20 . Hide the half logo panel surface.
21.
21 . Use ShowSelected to retrieve the full logo
panel surface.

22.
22 . Mirror the tunnel and shell surface along the
world Y axis.
23.
23 . Join everything up.
24.
24 . Save your work up to now.

26
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Alternate Patch

1. SaveAs under a new filename for working on
these variations.
2. ExtractSrf these surfaces.
3. Delete them.

4. Hide the logo panel surface.

5. With ShowSelected , retrieve the half logo
panel and the side profile surface.

6. Use MergeEdge to
repair the split in the
edge of the logo
panel.

27
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Join,
Join starting with the bottom curve and then
connecting the adjacent surface edges.

This was done because we want the Patch

surface to be fitted Tangent to only two of the
edges.

8. Fill in the hole with

a Patch . The default
checkbox settings
with 15 or 20 Surface
U and V spans should
be fine.

28
 Form vs. Shape 1

Now at first glance

this seems to look
fine, so what is the
problem?

A Patch can be used in a situation like this to

get a surface very quickly, but the result is
generally not feasible to tweak with point-editing
and not of superlative surface quality-a grid
pattern may become apparent in the surface
analysis views--or accuracy, as you can see with
the edge of a patch surface at right. Very dense
settings that slow down your whole model may
be necessary to get a patch within tolerance to
join.

Patch is not what I call a 'front-line' surface

creation tool. Outside the purposes for which it’s
intended(and you can see similar geometry used
in other applications,) such as filling in corners
where several fillets different sizes come
together(a situation for which a mathematically
"exact" NURBS solution does not exist)and
generating terrain from elevation data, it should
only be used when all else fails.

29
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Alternate Sweep1

Sweep1
1. Delete the Patch
surface.
2. Explode the curve
built for making the
Patch.
3. Delete the curves
that were created
from surface edges.

4. Hide the remaining

curve.

5. Explode the shell and tunnel polysurface.

6. Delete the tunnel surface.
7. Duplicate the shell surface using Copy with
the InPlace option.
8. Hide one of the shell surfaces.
9. Untrim the other shell surface with
KeepTrimObjects set to No.
No

30
 Form vs. Shape 1

10.
10 . Using
ShowSelected ,
retrieve the curve
used to trim off the
main surface and the
tunnel edge curve.

11.
11 . Trim off the
ellipsoid.
12.
12 . Delete the trim
curve.

13.
13 . Remove the split
in the edge of the
side profile surface
using MergeEdge or
Untrim.
Untrim

31
 Form vs. Shape 1

14.
14 . Build a Sweep1 along the side profile
surface. It doesn't affect the surface much, but Rail
use the Align with Surface option. Surface Edge

Section
Section
Surface
Curve
Edge

This is might be the first solution that would

come to mind when considering this problem.
While this may look like a good start, it’s not
really very promising considering what we ‘want’
to do. If we compare the tunnel edge curve to
the intersection of the sweep with the shell(curve
made with Intersect,)
Intersect it's not really close.
It would be possible to add more section curves
to the sweep and/or point-edit to get closer but
it would take a lot of work.

The plan to sidestep the 5-sided surface issue in

this case would be to edit the surface--I just
nudged a couple points here--so that it gets
trimmed off by the the brim. That's great, but
again it does not lend itself to precisely aligning
with our 'critical' features.

32
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Alternate Sweep2

Sweep2 NetworkSrf
1. Delete the Sweep1
surface.

2. Hide the brim

surface and the
tunnel edge curve.

3. Retrieve the half

brim surface with
ShowSelected .

33
 Form vs. Shape 1

4. Use DupEdge to
extract this curve
from the brim
surface.

4. Create a Blend curve. Using Curvature

Continuity, blend from the extracted curve then
(you can do this in either order) use the
Perpendicular option to blend to the edge of the
logo panel approximately where shown.

(2.78,209)

34
 Form vs. Shape 1

5. Turn on the control points for the Blend curve

and Delete two points.

There is an option in the Blend command to use

Position continuity, which accomplishes the
same thing as deleting these points, but this is
just as easy.

6. Join the Blend

curve to the extracted
edge curve.

35
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Split the edge of

the logo panel with
SplitEdge snapping to
the End of the curve.

End Snap

8. Build a Sweep 2 Rail

Surface Edge
surface.
Match Tangency

Section
Surface
Edge Rail
Curve

Section
Curve

9. Join the shell and

Sweep2 surface.

36
 Form vs. Shape 1

10.
10 . Retrieve this
curve with
ShowSelected .

7. Fil in the hole with

a NetworkSrf ,
matching Curvature to Surface Edge
Curvature Match
the end of the
Sweep2 surface. Only
match Position to the
other edges.
Surface
Edge
Surface
Edge

Curve

37
 Form vs. Shape 1

While it may be possible to salvage this, there

are a couple major issues.

With how a 2-rail sweep works, even though the

blend curve that's part of the one rail was
matched wihth G2 continuity, it's not quite
enough to avoid the creation of a visible change
in the surface. Now it should be possible to
tweak the curve and/or the surface to remove
that, and to help the 'fold' in the network
surface, but it would be hard to point-edit
without pulling the surface away from the brim
edge, and the level of fine-tuning this would
involve should only be neccessary when working
on something like a car body.
The biggest problem is that the geometry at this
corner of the network surface shown here is
what we technically refer to as ‘nasty.' Stretching
the corner of a surface infinitely thin like this
can cause problems with fillets and booleans, it
will be challenging to make the seam with
adjacent surfaces invisible, and the slightest out-
of-tolerance curve or edge will prevent it from
joining to it's neigbors cleanly. Use with caution.

38
 Form vs. Shape 1

Here's an example of a similar attempt to make

this using two surfaces we will simply look at.
This was the kind of surface topology I actually
used in the project that inspired this, and what I
thought I was going to wind up doing in this
tutorial.
Much like the previous example, SplitEdge was
used on the tunnel edge and a Sweep 2 was
made. The remaining area was filled with a
NetworkSrf , after making up one or two section
curves.

In my original project, this approach required

coming up with many section curves for network
surfaces and many iterations, and in the end I
didn’t get a result that was better than ‘close
enough,’ and here we’re not close at all. The
lesson from both these examples would seem to
be that building with fewer surfaces is not
necessarily simpler.

39
 Form vs. Shape 1

Tunnel Alernate Point Editing

1. Delete the surface
created in the last
section, the brim
surface, everything
but these two
surfaces and one
curve.

2. ShowSelected the
full shell surface and
the tunnel edge curve.

3. With MergeEdge
remove the split in the
edge of the half panel
surface.

40
 Form vs. Shape 1

4. Sweep 1 the edge of the side profile surface

along the edge of the logo panel. Use the default
settings.

Section Surface
Edge

Rail Surface
Edge

This surface is much more promising than our

other attempts from a point-pushing potential
point of view. There are not too many points and
they are arranged in an orderly manner. The
back end folds over on itself, but what we want
in that area would be excessively painstaking to
achieve by point-pushing alone in any case.

41
 Form vs. Shape 1

5. Place a Point in the

Right view.

(-1.0,9.0)

6. Use Split with the Isocurve option, Shrink set to Yes,

Yes to cut the sweep,
snapping to the previous point.
7. Delete the point.

This concept does not

Point Snap actually require
accurately splitting
the surface, the
reference point is just
to help keep your
model identical to
this.

42
 Form vs. Shape 1

8. Delete the back half of the sweep.

9. MatchSrf the swept surface to the side profile
surface. Specify Tangency Continuity and Match
Edges by closest points.

This macthing is necessary because Sweep1

does not try make the surface tangent to input
section edges.

10.
10 . Turn on the control points of the front
surface and begin editing it.

43
 Form vs. Shape 1

There are no point-by-point instructions for

editing this surface primarily because they
would be rather tedious and not really help you
get the 'feel' of freeform editing. Here are
number of shots showing the progression over a
couple minutes of editing.

44
 Form vs. Shape 1

45
 Form vs. Shape 1

In a short time I was able to produce this

surface which has exactly the kind of form
desired and intersects the shell with an accuracy
to the reference curve of about 0.04 units. By
adding more knots to the surface it would be
quite possible to get it within our absolute
tolerance settings of 0.01 units, but not
necessary for this exercise.

11.
11 . Use Intersect on
the tunnel surface
and brim to obtain a
curve.

12.
12 . Run CrvDeviation on the intersection curve
and the tunnel edge curve to check the accuracy
of your editing. It will list and place points
highlighting the maximum and minimum
deviation. See if you can get within 0.05 units,
particularly near the top.

46
 Form vs. Shape 1

13.
13 . To quickly obtain
a surface for the back
half of the tunnel Surface Edge
build a NetworkSrf . Match Tangency

Curve

Surface Edge
Match Tangency

Curve

Now this is not refined enough for machining

yet, but it looks pretty good. If the tolerance
requirements for the edge of the tunnel were
not too tight, this would be my preferred
approach to making this and a likely scenario
for when "designing" this object as opposed to
strictly producing a model.
It’s generally easier and quicker to generate a
form by starting with some simple surfaces,
editing them until you like how they intersect,
and then trimming them up, than it is starting
with some edges and building surfaces to fill
them in. Now as the design gets more refined
and things get "nailed down," it might very well
wind up being rebuilt much like our original
version.

47
 Form vs. Shape 1

Refining Brim

1. Open the file you saved before working on the 2. ShowSelected the brim polysurface.
tunnel surface variations.

(-8.45,-0.01)

(-10.34,-0.69)

(-11.61,-1.23)
(-11.77,-1.32)

(-11.85,-1.44)

(-11.85,-1.75)
(-12.06,-2.0)
(-12.24,-2.0)
(-11.85,-2.0)
(-11.85,-2.14)
(-12.24,-2.11) (-12.05,-2.14)

3. Draw a Curve for the front section of the brim.

48
 Form vs. Shape 1

4. Mirror the curve

about the centre of
the base brim.

End Snap

5. Move the mirrored

curve up by 0. 53
units, or to the point
shown.

(10.24,-1.58)
End point

6. Point-edit the rear

section curve, leaving
the points near the (5.99,1.45)
'lip' alone. (8.38,1.19)
(9.74,1.03)
(9.90,0.96)
(9.98,0.82)

(9.98,-0.39)

49
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Use DupEdge to make copies of the edges of

the base brim.
8. Delete the base brim. These steps were not
necessary, it's only to reduce clutter.

10.
10. Use the curves taken from the base brim as
the rails to build a Sweep 2 surface. Use the
Maintain Height option.

Section
Curve

Section
Curve Rail
Curves

The Maintain Height option keeps the shape of

the lip from being scaled as the the distance
between the rail curves varies, as seen here. The
surface on the left was built with Maintain
Height off.

50
 Form vs. Shape 1

You will notice from the isocurves that the

surface is not totally symmetric. With any
operation where a curve or surface is "fitted,"
Rhino does not "know" that something is
supposed to be symmetric, it just iterates until
the result is within the tolerance settings. There
were two such operations involved in this: the
sweep itself and the trimming of the base brim
from which the rail curves were extracted.

While not an issue here, these small differences

can sometimes cause frustration with
subsequent operations, a boolean or fillet will
work on one side but not the other, which is why
you should generally build symmetric objects in
half and Mirror them.

This has been built in an iterative manner suited

to working without construction history: quickly
build a starting shape, possibly use it to build
the shape a different way, then discard it.

51
 Form vs. Shape 1

Finishing Outer Shell

1. Show the main
shell polysurface.
2. Hide the brim
objects.

3. Hide the offset

surfaces.
4. DupEdge 2 edges.
5. Join them together.

This edge would not fillet successfully with

FilletEdge. Where the fillet crosses the point
where the 3 surfaces meet, that’s a case the
filleter doesn’t know how to handle, so some
clean up would be required, although it's not a
huge problem.

52
 Form vs. Shape 1

6. Create a Pipe with

a Radius of 0. 3
around the curve and
Cap set to No.
No

7. The pipe should

fully intersect the
shell already, but to
make sure use
ExtendSrf with the
Smooth option on
each end. Use a small
factor like 0. 2.

8. Mirror the pipe

about the origin.

53
 Form vs. Shape 1

9. Split the shell with

the pipes.

10.
10 . Delete the pipes,
the curve used to
build make them, and
the thin surfaces.

11.
11 . Fill in the gaps with BlendSrf . Use Curvature
Continuity and the default Blend Bulge settings.
You could build two blends or make one and
Mirror it.

54
 Form vs. Shape 1

12.
12 . Join up the shell surfaces.
13.
13 . ShowSelected the upper brim surface.

14.
14 . Check that the surface normals on both
objects are pointed outwards. There are two
ways to do this. With Dir,
Dir check the direction of
the arrows and use the Flip option as needed. If
you have to deal with a number of objects you
can use the AdvancedDisplay settings to show
the backfaces (the "inside" direction) of all
objects in a separate color while working and
use the Flip command as needed.

15.
15 . BooleanUnion the
brim and shell
objects.

55
 Form vs. Shape 1

Booleans work on open surfaces and

polysurfaces with the normal directions
determining which side is ‘out.’ If the normals
are pointing the ‘wrong’ way, you will get an
opposite result to what you expect.

16.
16 . In one FilletEdge operation, put a 0. 125
fillet between the brim and shell and around the
logo panel.

56
 Form vs. Shape 1

Shelling
1. OffsetSrf the outer
polysurface by - 0. 2
units, or +0. 2 units,
depending on which
way the normals on
the surface are
pointing. Offset it to
the 'inside.' Use the
provided default
Tolerance.

Where the curvature of a surface is smaller than the thickness of the offset
it will fold over on itself, so some repairs will be required here. Doing small
fillets after shelling can help, but then repair is still needed because Rhino
V3 does not trim or extend offset surfaces to make a closed 'shell.'

We will first tackle

where the offset
surface has folded
over onto itself
around the lip.

57
 Form vs. Shape 1

2. Use Split with the Isocurve option, and Shrink

set to Yes,
Yes to slice the lower surface below the
fold.

3. Delete the thin

piece.

58
 Form vs. Shape 1

4. From the Top or Perspective view, run

ExtrudeCrv and extrude the edge of the upper
brim surface. Use the Tapered Mode and specify
a DraftAngle of 4 Degrees .

5. BlendSrf between
the lower brim and
the extruded surface.
Specify continuity as Tangency
shown and use the Continuity

default Blend Bulge

settings.
Curvature Continuity

6. Delete the
extruded surface.

59
 Form vs. Shape 1

7. Hide the outer

shell.

The next issue is further up the brim surface,

where it has again folded over on itself,
particularly at the back.

At the front, the surface has not quite folded

over, but there is a quite visible 'kink.' The
objective will be to remove the visible defect
without affecting the overall shape, not to
achieve any particular minimum radius. Now
this probably would have been best dealt with by
making the top and sides of the brim separate
objects, but these problems can't always be
foreseen.

60
 Form vs. Shape 1

8. Place 2 Points to snap to in the next split

operation. To make sure they are placed
correctly type them using world coordinates, so
enter w0, - 11.
11 . 65,
65 , - 1. 53 and w6. 768,
768 , 2. 5, 0. 64.
64

(w6.768,2.5,0.64)

(w0,-11.65,-1.53)

9. Use Split with the Isocurve option, and Shrink

set to Yes,
Yes to slice the brim surface in two
places. Use the Point Osnap and snap to the
points drawn previously.

Point snap

Point snap

61
 Form vs. Shape 1

10.
10 . Delete the points.
11.
11 . In the Top view draw a Line along the world
X axis and another along the Y axis. Length is
not important, just that they cross the brim.

12.
12 . Project those
lines onto the narrow
strip split out of the
brim.
13.
13 . Delete the lines.

62
 Form vs. Shape 1

14.
14 . Point-edit the curves made by projecting to remove the self-
intersection. Your curves may not look exactly like these, so take these
pictures as general guidelines. Below is the rear curve.

15.
15 . Point-edit the side curves. Do both separately or modify one and Mirror
it, though for our purposes it's not imperative that they be identical.

63
 Form vs. Shape 1

16.
16 . In this situation the tolerance in the Project actually eliminated the
kink in the front curve, here I just adjusted a point to make it fit the
original edge closer.

17.
17 . Delete the
surface split from the
brim.

64
 Form vs. Shape 1

18.
18 . Use those 4 curves as sections to build a Sweep 2 surface between the
brim pieces. Match Tangency to the rail edges and specify to Refit the
cross-section curves within 0. 01 units.

19.
19 . Delete the curves used to build the sweep.
20.
20 . Around the edge of the logo panel are 6
skinny surfaces, offset fillet surfaces that have
flipped over on themselves. Delete them.

65
 Form vs. Shape 1

The final area to clean up is around the logo

panel and tunnel surfaces. The logo panel and
tunnel surfaces need to be trimmed off, and the
fillets repaired.

21.
21 . Join together 4
tunnel surfaces.

66
 Form vs. Shape 1

22.
22 . Create a curve by running Intersect on the
logo panel and tunnel objects.

23.
23 . Build a Pipe with
a Radius of 0. 125
around the
intersection curve.
24.
24 . Delete the
intersection curve.

67
 Form vs. Shape 1

25.
25 . Run ExtendSrf
with the Smooth
option on each end.
Use a small factor of
0. 15.
15

26.
26 . Split the logo
panel and tunnel
objects with the pipe.

68
 Form vs. Shape 1

27.
27 . Delete the pipe
and thin surfaces.

End Snap

18.
18 . Use Split with the Isocurve option, Shrink set
to Yes,
Yes to split the fillet surface below the logo
panel, snapping to the End of the logo panel
edge.

29.
29 . Split by Isocurve again, splitting the fillet
surface below the tunnel surface, snapping to
the End of the tunnel surface edge.
30.
30 . Delete the small pieces.

End Snap

69
 Form vs. Shape 1

31.
31 . Repeat the Split
and Delete operations
on the other side.

32.
32 . UnTrim the brim surface with the
KeepTrimObjects option.

70
 Form vs. Shape 1

33.
33 . On each side of the model, Split the curve with the Point option,
snapping to the End of the fillet surfaces.
34.
34 . Delete the small curve pieces.

A lot of these steps are being done on both sides of the model separately
so that any small differences from one side to the other don't prevent this
from joining up successfully.

35.
35 . Again on each side of the model, build a Blend curve between the
edges of the fillet surfaces. Specify Tangency Continuity.

71
 Form vs. Shape 1

36.
36 . Join the blend
curves to the pieces
of the brim trim curve.

37.
37 . Trim off the brim
surface.
38.
38 . Delete the trim
curve.

39.
39 . Join up all the
objects.

72
 Form vs. Shape 1

40.
40 . BlendSrf between the logo panel and tunnel
edges. Specify Tangency Continuity.

41.
41 . Run ExtendSrf
with the Smooth
option on each end of
the blend. Use a
factor of 0. 1.

73
 Form vs. Shape 1

42.
42 . Draw a Line
between the ends of
the fillets.

End Snap
End Snap

43.
43 . In the Right view,
use the line to Trim
off both ends of the
blend surface.
44.
44 . Delete the line.

45.
45 . Join the blend
surface to the
polysurface.

74
 Form vs. Shape 1

46.
46 . Fill in each remaining hole with a small NetworkSrf . Specify Tangency
Continuity for all edges.

47.
47 . Join the network surfaces to the polysurface.

75
 Form vs. Shape 1

48.
48 . ShowSelected the
outer polysurface.
49.
49 . Join the inner and
outer polysurfaces.

76
 Form vs. Shape 1

Index freeform editing 44

G
Patch 28
Pipe 53, 67
A
G2 14 Planar Osnap 16
AdvancedDisplay 15, 55
grid options 3 Plane 11
Align with Surface 32
I Project 13, 62, 64
B
InPlace 30 S
Blend 34, 71
Intersect 32, 46, 67 shell 5, 57
BlendSrf 54, 59, 73
Int snap 19 ShowEdges 15
BooleanUnion 55
iterative 51 Split 11, 42, 54, 58, 61, 68, 69,
brim 5 71
J
C SplitEdge 19, 20, 36, 39
Join 7, 10, 26, 35, 36, 52, 66, 72,
ChangeDegree 8 74, 75, 76 Sweep1 32, 41

CrvDeviation 46 L Sweep2 20, 21, 36, 39, 50, 65

Curve 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 48 Line 16, 19, 62 symmetric objects 51

CutPlane 11 Logo Panel 8 T

D logo panel 5 Tapered 59

design intent 18 M tolerance 2, 64

Dir 55 Maintain Height 50 ToPoint 7

DocumentProperties 2 MatchSrf 43 Trim 6, 7, 10, 15, 16, 31, 72, 74

DupEdge 34, 50, 52 MergeEdge 27, 31, 40 tunnel 5

E mesh options 3 Tunnel Edges 13

Ellipsoid 5 Mirror 10, 15, 26, 49, 53, 54 U

Emap 22 modeling aids 4 units 2

Explode 30 Move 49 UnTrim 30, 31, 70

ExtendSrf 53, 68, 73 N W

ExtractIsocurve 23 Near snap 24 WebBrowser 4

ExtractSrf 27 NetworkSrf 21, 22, 25, 37, 39, Z

47, 75
Extrude 7, 14 Zebra 22
nudging 4, 9
ExtrudeCrv 8, 59
O
F
OffsetSrf 57
FilletEdge 56
Ortho Osnap 17
Flip 55
P

77