Rhino Setup

These are settings that we suggest modifying from the Rhino defaults in order to make Shape Machine easier to use. These settings that will be preserved through all of your Rhino sessions, regardless of which document is open. To modify these settings, you’ll need to open Rhino and create or open any file.

Color Settings

Rhino defaults to a grey background color, which can make it difficult to see elements of the Drawscript templates. Some people also find it difficult to see the default yellow selection color on a lighter background. If you’d like to change any of the color settings in Rhino, you can follow the steps below:

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Under Rhino Options, navigate to Appearance > Colors.

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Select the “Appearance” tab.

Here you can change the colors of various elements within Rhino. We suggest the following settings:

  • Viewport Colors > Background: “White”.

  • Object Display > Selected Objects: a bright color you are unlikely to use as a layer color.

Point Display Settings

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Under Rhino Options, navigate to View > Display Modes > Wireframe.

  3. Here you can control settings specific to the Wireframe display mode. We suggest the following settings:

    • Objects > Points > Point Object Settings > Point Style: “Solid Circle”.

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Select the “Display Modes” tab.

  3. Select the “Objects” tab.

  4. Here you can change the way points are displayed for the selected viewport. We suggest the following settings:

    • Points > Point Object Settings > Point Style: “Solid Circle”.

Note

These settings only apply to a specific Display Mode. The instructions here have you modify the display settings for the Wireframe Display Mode, but you can change other Display Mode settings too.

Panels

Rhino has several useful features that can only be accessed by panels that are not enabled by default. If you’d like to enable any of these to make them permanently visible on your screen, you can select Window > Panels. You can drag and drop these to dock them in a location on your screen. You can place these wherever you want, but we suggest enabling the following:

  • “Properties”

  • “Layers”

  • “Linetypes”

  • “Command History”

There are also two additional panels we suggest that require running special commands to activate. To turn these on, you will need to run the following commands and select “Show”:

  • ShowOsnap

  • SelectionFilter

Constraints

Ortho locks the creation and manipulation of objects to specific angles relative to the x, y, and z axes. You can hold the “Shift” key to temporarily disable it. To keep things organized, we suggest having Ortho enabled. Ortho mode can also be enabled/disabled in the bar along the bottom of the screen.

To change the angle that Ortho allows you to snap to, run the OrthoAngle command. We suggest using “45” in the majority of cases.

Osnap controls the points that your cursor can snap to when drawing and manipulating shapes. For example, checking the “End”, “Point”, and “Mid” will allow you to easily select points as well as the end and midpoints of lines. It is also possible to align objects to these points without directly selecting them by hovering over them until a grey indicator appears. The indicator will turn blue if you are indirectly snapping to this point. You can also select a point based on the midpoint or intersection of two snaps.

You can change your Osnap settings as you like, but we recommend docking the panels somewhere on your screen for easy access. To start, we also recommend you enable the following:

  • End (endpoints)

  • Point (points)

  • Mid (midpoints)

  • Cen (geometric center)

  • Int (intersections)

  • Quad (circle quadrant)

You may also find it helpful to use Near and Tan (tangent) in specific cases.

Osnap can also be enabled/disabled in the bar along the bottom of the screen.

Template Settings

For your convenience, we suggest saving all Shape Machine template files as templates in Rhino. To do this, you can follow the steps below:

  1. Download one of our Shape Machine templates.

  2. Open Rhino and select “Open Other…”

  3. Select the Shape Machine template file.

  4. Select File > Save as Template…

  5. Select “Export”.

You will now be able to use this as template when creating a new a Rhino file. If you’d like to make this the default template you can follow the steps below:

  1. Select File > New Using Template.

  2. Select the Shape Machine template from the “Custom templates” section.

  3. Select “Make default template”.

Toolbar Icon Sizes

You can change the size of Rhino’s toolbar icons. If they’re too small, it can help to increase them. To do this, you can follow the steps below:

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Under Rhino Options, navigate to Toolbar > Size and Styles.

  3. Here you can control settings related to how Toolbars display. If you want to increase the icon size, you can do so here.

  1. Run the following command: Options.

  2. Select the “Sizes and Styles” tab.

  3. Here you can control settings related to how Toolbars display. If you want to increase the icon size, you can do so here.