Saturday, April 4, 2009

The basics of Paneling Tools

Learn the basics of using the Paneling Tools plugin for Rhino. You can download and try Paneling Tools through the main wiki page on the plugin.


JamesMHarrison said...

Thanks- these tutorials are very helpful.

You mentioned you plan to go into more depth on paneling. I've wondered if there are ways to cover a given shape with irregular quadrangles? I.E, irregular faceting?
Imagine taking a sphere, and randomly sanding flat patches onto it, and that is the effect I'm aiming for. Thanks for any suggestions.

Anonymous said...

Hi James,
Yes, I think that it is possible to make irregular flat quads on a sphere. Manipulation of the point grid with something like "SoftMove" and then using pullback or project to get the points on the sphere again might work for you. The rows of panels will need to stay linear however if they must remain flat. as soon as you have a twisting grid on a spherical surface the panels will no longer be flat when made with four sides. If you use triangular shaped panels and choose flat faces only, you can have a twisting grid while maintaining flatness. There is also a command called "ptPanelRandomPoints" that can be used, although these will always be three sided.

One last approach would be to use Grasshopper... but that's a different topic.

Thanks for the feedback,

Muthahar said...

Hi Brian,
Thanks for both these very helpful tutorials!
I am working on panelising an 'eye' shaped surface (two equal arcs, with an arched profile) with ONLY flat panels of the same size (or as few 'modules' as possible)
Does Paneling Tools have a command can do same sized panels by default? How can this be done?

Thanks in advance!
PS: I have tried going down the Grasshopper route, but nothing straightforward there.. only a million different sized panels..

Anonymous said...

Hi Muthahar,
Sorry for the delay in responding... I've been traveling. If you could send me a file that shows what you have so far it would help me understand more. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that the shape of the surface being panelized will often determine the size of the panels and there flatness (Think of a sphere). It is possible to make all flat uniform panels in PT or GH but the results may not be close enough to the actual shape of your surface. PT has options for flat panels only and if the spacing of the point grid is uniform, the panels will be as well. In your case, the eye shaped surface may work best with triangular shaped panels which will also be flat by default. My email is brian(dot)james(at)mcneel(dot)com

annianni said...

Dear Brian,

THank you very much for this helpful video.

I would like to know why my paneling tools menu looks different from yours.

I have Rhino 4 SR9.
and downloaded paneling tools but i have way less options than you have.

I don't have the option grid surface uv..

Anyways, thank you again,

All the best,


Anonymous said...

Apologies again Anni for the delay in responding. I doubt you are still having this issue but if so, I'd suggest downloading the most current version of the plugin. Some commands may have changed since this video was originally recorded. I believe the one you're looking for is now called Surface Domain. Which is the same as saying UV really. All the same functionality should still be present.