Practical Rhino: Construction-Ready Parametric Wall

1. Intro: Hello there. This is Josan Afsha architect. In this course, we are going to learn about modeling a parametric wall in Reno and also we're going to learn how to prepare construction documents from the model. So here's the challenge. From a modeling perspective alone, after you learn the commands making a wallet, this is not that challenging. The real challenge is in producing the TD documents. The actual Treaty model itself cannot directly be used for construction, and therefore, we need a two D file containing all the sections which can be well over 100 and we have to use that file with a CNC or laser cutting machine to cut the pieces. And doing this manually is extremely time consuming. Of course, an alternative is to use tools like grasshopper, but that requires additional skills, and some architects and designers don't have those skills. So to solve this challenge, we are going to work with Reno's own tools, and I'm going to introduce some commands and combinations of commands to automate this process as much as possible. So this is the main takeaway of the course. Automation without using tools like grasshopper, and in doing so, we are going to learn alternative ways to model the actual wall in three D space and also alternative ways to automate the process of making the two D documents. And all of this is done in a totally practical context. So actually, you can use the end result of the course in a CNC machine to cut the pieces and actually construct the wall yourself. So this is basically what we do in this course. So I invite you to join me in this practical project. 2. the modeling process: In this video, we're going to take a look at the general process that will follow to model the parametric wall inside of Rhino. If you look up parametric interior wall, you're going to see a lot of results like this. And these are quite common when it comes to parametric modeling, where you have an object that is cut using straight sections, and these sections are usually vertical, but not necessarily. And we're going to see how we can model one of these inside of Rhino. Before we start, let's take a look at the general steps that we are going to take. So we're going to start with a base model, and this is basically the organic model that we are going to use to cut away two D profiles from. After we get those two D profiles, they exist in three D space. We need to transfer them to the two D space or in simple terms, we need to lay them out on the ground plane because that is required by the CNC machine or laser cutting machine to be cut. And after that, we have to add some numbers to the profiles because that will assist the people who are in charge of assembling the pieces to assemble them in the correct order. And finally, I'm going to mention some tips for exporting that can help to enhance the quality of the final result. In the yellow boxes down here, you can see the names of some Rhino commands that we are going to use in our process, and you're going to learn them in a practical way. I also use other simpler commands, but I'm not going to explain them very much because I'm assuming that you already know the basics of Rhino and, for example, know how to draw a line or a curve or how to move objects in Rhino. Um, when I designed this process, my emphasis was on increasing our speed and also avoiding repetitive tasks as much as possible. For example, when we are arranging these profiles on the ground plane, we are not going to move and rotate them individually and put them into position. That would take a lot of time. Instead, we are going to use a combination of these commands to automatically perform all of these operations on all of the objects at once. Lastly, I have to mention that the best tool to use in this scenario would be grasshopper, the algorithmic environment instead of Rhino. However, we are not going to use it in this course because it requires its own set of skills, which I'll cover in another course. For now, we are going to focus on simplicity and doing everything using native Rhino commands. Now we know what we want to do, so let's begin. 3. the base model: In this video, we are going to create the base surface, which is an organic shape with a wavy pattern. So the first method involves using a plane and directly manipulating the control points on that plane to get our pattern. So let's see how it's done. So let's maximize the viewport here and draw a plane. I know that the wall is vertical, but for the sake of simplicity, let's draw this on the ground for now and we can rotate it later. And for the measurements, I'm going to give it a length of six and a height of three, a standard size when you want to design this for interior wall. So I'm going to place it here and hit F ten to check out the control points. Now, we need more control points to be able to precisely modify the shape of this surface. So I'm going to select it, and from the surface tools menu, I'm going to click on Rebuild surface. Now here we have the option to change the number of control points for the surface. And I'm going to go with, for example, five in each direction. Now, let's hit F ten and manipulate a couple of these points. I'm going to move them upwards like this. And as you can see, I can easily create a smooth surface here. But the problem is, we need more precision, and we need to create at least several wavy patterns on top of this. And this number of control points is not enough. So let's hit Control Z and rebuild it again. And this time, I'm going to give it a higher number, for example, like 30 in each direction. Now, this does give us more control, but it introduces a new problem, and that is we have to individually select these points to be able to modify them. And an additional problem is that once we create only a couple of points, the transition between the higher points to the lower points is not as smooth as we want. You know, it's so abrupt. And somehow we need to fix these problems as well. So at the one hand, we lose precision, and at the other hand, we are faced with a process that is time consuming and does not offer the same smoothness as before. So let's take a look at a way to solve this challenge. So let's hit Control Z, and now we're going to take a look at a command in Rhino that can solve this problem. So going into the transform menu, we have a command here called soft Move. And this basically is a command that can move a lot of objects together in a way the further we get from the center of movement, the less the objects are going to move. And what that means is that it can create a smooth effect in the shape. So let's see that in action. So I'm going to hit F ten and select all the control points and deselect the object itself. Now, we only have the control points selected. And from this drop down, I'm going to select the second item here, which is soft move. And it asks me for a point to move from. So I'm going to click here, and now it wants a radius. So I'm going to click somewhere, and then I can drag my mouse up and down and click here. Now, it gives me a preview of what it's going to look like. And as you can see, the further we go from the center of movement, the less these points are going to move upwards. We still have some control before we confirm the command. So for example, we can change the position of it or we can change the height if we go into a side view like this and so on. So if I hit Enter now, you can see that it transformed these points and therefore, the surface itself in a smooth way. So now let's take a look at how we can move them according to a wavy pattern and not just the points. So I'm going to hit Control Z, and let's run the command again. And you can see that before I click for a point, it has several options up here, and one of them is curves. It basically means that I can use some curves as a guide for moving this point. So let's cancel out of here and draw some curves on the surface. So going to the top view port, I'm going to just draw some simple curves like this. You know, to resemble a wavy pattern here. Well, I can delete one of these points to make it smoother and like that. So now let's go back here and repeat the command. So I'm going to hit F ten. And as a trick, if I drag here, I have to deselect the object itself and the curves. But I can also use a command called select control points, which is typed like cell control points. And once I do that, it selects all the control points that are visible in the viewport. So it saves some time. And now I can run the soft move command and select the curves option and click on my curves and hit Enter. Now, it wants the same radius here, and I'm going to go with this. And now when I move the mouse, you can see that it is following the curves in the transformation. And I can click here and it gives me the preview. And let's change the radius a little bit. Also, we can move the effect, allowing the surface. So whenever we are satisfied with the result, we can just hit Enter, and there we have the surface that is transformed in a wavy pattern. However, the result is still looking somewhat crude and needs more finesse. And also, the endpoints here are a little bit sharp and need to blend in with the flat areas better. So I'm going to test the command here called a smooth, which smoothes out these parts a little bit. So let's run the command called smooth. And what this command does is basically it tries to reduce the difference between the angles of the faces angles between the control points and also tries to minimize the height difference between different parts, which gives us a smoother result. But as you can see, we're going to lose some detail. And this is not what we are after in this case. So I'm going to hit Control Z. Uh, although shapes like this might be desirable for some scenarios, in this case, we want to have more precise control over the waves. So we're going to look at an alternative method to model this parametric wall. So now let's delete this, and I'm going to explain the loft command. You can find the loft command in the surface tools tab and towards the left here. So let's go to a side view to draw a couple of curves to test how the loft command works. So I'm going to draw a wavy curve, for example, like this and another one with a different wave like that. And let's also put some distance between them like this and run the loft command. The first thing you want us is to select the curve. So I'm going to select these and hit Enter. And you can see it gives us a preview and also some options. So it presents us with some styles as it calls it. And once I change them, you can see that nothing changes in the viewport. So the reason is because these options become activated once we have more than two profiles. Now, in case of two profiles, the only thing it does is to connect a straight line between the two profiles. So let's cancel and copy this profile to the right as well. So now we have three profiles. I'm going to repeat the loft command again and select these. And now you can see that it connects them. But this time, instead of a line, it connects them with a smooth curve. And this is pretty much what we are after here, but let's explain the other options a little bit so you understand what they're about. So the first one, normal is basically this basically passes a surface through the curves in a smooth way. And the second one, loose, basically does the same thing. Only the intermediate curves are not exactly passed through. It places some control points along this curve, but the surface itself looks smoother, but also loses some detail and so makes it not ideal for our work. Another option that we have here straight sections. This connects them with a straight line. So this is not ideal as well. We got two other options here which are not very useful here, and they got some differences that make them suitable for special scenarios that we are not going to cover here. So let's put it back on normal. And it also has an option down here to rebuild the surface based on a number of control points. Once I activate it, for example, with five control points, you can see it gives me a smoother surface, but again, loses detail. So I'm going to accept the defaults and set it on Do not simplify and hit okay. Now, so this is basically how the loft command works. Now that you have seen this, let's draw our wall using the loft command. Okay, let's delete this and draw other curves here. So I'm going to draw a curve with the wall height. So a vertical line with a height of three. Now, this is just a guideline, so I can draw my curves according to this in a side view. So I'm going to go to the front and start the curve command. And I'm going to start from here and start drawing a wavy pattern. I'm going to finish it right here. So this is one profile, and for the other one, I'm going to do the same process only this time a little bit different. For example, like this. Let's also draw a third one to make it more complex. Okay. So going back to perspective view, let's separate these profiles. I'm going to put it here. So let's draw another guideline, with a length of 6 meters. And I'm going to put one of these at the end and another one in the middle. So let's see how the loft works on these profiles. So let's bring loft and head enter. Okay, it does give us some wavy patterns, but it's not smooth as we want it. So one of the things that I want this shape to have is that when it reaches the end, it has to transition into a straight line. So let's control Z, and I'm going to bring these profiles towards the center here. And at the two sides, I'm going to just put some two straight lines like this. So now let's repeat the loft command. Alright, now it looks better than that, and they are smoothly transitioning to a straight line. But still, these bulgy areas are continuing up to the end. So let's also copy another line here. To have more straight parts inside of this loft. So let's select this and hit Enter. Alright, now, I think we are getting there. So now we have a wavy pattern, but we can still make it more intricate and add some detail, edit the curves and so on. Okay, let's delete the surface and make some changes to the curves. So I'm going to hit F ten and select these control points and using the scale tool here, I'm going to scale them a little bit to make them more pinchy. Let's also do the same with this curve. And yeah, let's see how that looks. Okay, that's interesting, but we can still do more changes. So now we are facing a new challenge, and that is whenever we are making a small change, we need to perform the loft command again, and each time we need to delete loft, delete loft, and so on. So there is a way we can save some time here and automate the process. Rhino has an ability, and that is the record history mode down here. Now, what this basically does is that whenever we run a command, it records the process. So when we change the inputs, for example, in this case, the curves, it repeats the command automatically and gives us the result immediately instead of having to manually do it ourselves. So in the case of our loft, for example, let's activate it here by clicking it. Of course, you can right click it and set it on always record history, which means that it becomes activated by default. I don't want to activate it all the time, so let's just activate it for this specific command. Now, if I run the loft command again and just as usual and hit Enter, you can see that it goes off again after the command is finished. But now the difference is that whenever I change the input curves, for example, change a control point like this. Loft itself updates based on my change. So I can do a lot of trials and errors and see the result immediately reflected on the surface. So let's do a couple of these changes with history enabled. So I'm going to bring it down here, make it more bulky here, and I want to add another wave in the middle of this. But you see the number of control points is not enough or not enough for that. So what I can do is to use another command called Insert Control Point. Now, I can select my curve and click anywhere on it and add these control points like that. Very simply. So you can see it also updates the surface, and now I can click it, click the curve, and drag the control point in the middle to make a small wave here. Beautiful. So now we are getting there, and we get this nice pinchy effect in the middle where the curves where the waves are reaching together here. Let's disrupt this pattern and make this one a little bit larger, yes. And let's also create some small disruptions down here, which looks too flat now. So I'm going to insert some more control points, for example, here and here. And okay, these two are very close, and let's bring one of them out here like that and bring this one up and a little bit more. So you can see, we can make these kinds of changes very easily with a combination of history mode and changing the control points on these curves. Now, I want to explore another scenario where we want to add some detail in another direction. So, in addition of passing through these curves, for example, I want them to pass through a certain path when looked from the plan view. If we do this with the loft command, we have two options. One of them is to add profiles between the ones that we have, which is time consuming and is not the optimum solution for our work. Another one is to add some horizontal profiles. For example, the ones that pass from up here and down there and kind of dictates the path that the surface should pass through in the plan view. But there is a problem with that. The loft command does not work well when there is a sudden change in the direction of the profiles. So to see what happens, let's delete this and use the loft command again. Only I'm going to go through this and this and then select the horizontal line here. You can see that it gives me a very odd surface because it tries to pass through them in order in the order that I click them, and it cannot find a smooth transition between these three curves. So that's why it self intersects. So let's take a look at another command in the surface tab that can take care of this problem for us. Now, this command is called network surface, which basically can make a surface from curves that exist in two different directions, which basically gives us more control over where exactly the surface is passing through. So to see how it works, I'm going to draw some curves between these vertical sections that we have. So let's draw curves that pass through these points. And I'm going to delete that and copy this one down here as well, because it has more control points. And now let's make some changes to it, for example, like this. As you can see, it doesn't even have to pass through the other profiles exactly. So I'm going to make these two changes. And now let's bring network surface and select all the curves. And when I hit Enter, you can see that it created a surface that passed through my profiles, but also tries to pass through the horizontal profiles that I have here. Now, sometimes it doesn't exactly follow that curve. And the reason is because I have this curve here and another one that I just draw that I just drew and it cannot possibly be at two positions at the same time. So it tries to place the surface somewhere in the middle. And the best scenario happens when we pass these curves exactly through those points. So let's see what happens if we do that. I'm going to hit Control Z and insert some additional control points for these lines. Now, I want to keep these points intact, and I'm going to add some intermediate points here as well. So when I drag these points, nothing happens to the placement points, placement points on the previous profiles. And I'm going to bring this inside instead, and this one out. Okay, I'm going to bring the other one and this one as well. Okay, that's I'm going to bring it here. That's good. So now let's run network surface again. And as you can see, now it's passing through them better, but still there are some differences between the profile curves and the surface. Now, let's play around with the options that it gives us to see how we can fit it with the curves. Now, it has some tolerance values, and if I decrease the tolerance to a very low number, you can see that it fits better. It's the equivalent of increasing the number of control points, basically. So for me, a number like this is pretty okay, there are still some small differences here, but at the same time, I don't want to increase them too much because that can slow down rhino. And another thing is that sometimes it can introduce some strange anomalies in the surface when we have an extremely high number of control points. So basically, I'm trying to balance smoothness with precision here until I get the optimum solution or the optimum surface that I'm looking for. So I'm going to hit OK here, and you can see that it passes through every curve. However, for our purposes, we are looking for a wavy pattern that basically passes from left to right with some variation in the middle. So I guess loft would be the best option from among these three options that I introduced. So I'm going to go with loft to model this wall now. Okay, so let's delete this and also the top and bottom curves. And I'm going to do another loft with the record history mode on. And now let's make some adjustments to this. So it looks like a wavy pattern with a squeezed part in the middle. So I'm going to select a the control points here. And sometimes, when you want to select them while the object itself is showing, a trick is to put the object in another layer and lock that layer or lock the object individually. So I'm going to just middle click and select Lock here, so it won't be selected. And now I can hit F ten and, for example, move all of these control points up there a little bit, and the surface updates for me. So let's also use the scale tool to bring them together a little bit. You can see I can do that very easily here. And also, I'm going to modify these control points. Let's move them down a little bit and expand them. So there's a contrast between the middle part and the sides. So I'm going to do the same here. And expand them. I can also move the profile itself. For example, I can increase the distance here to have a different pattern. And let's also contract it a little bit and move it, sorry. Let's contract it a little bit and move it upwards here. So the two sides are not symmetrical. And let's also bring this one down. Okay. And now let's take a look at it from the side and make sure that we haven't overdone anything here. I guess this part is a little bit exaggerated, so I'm going to move it back a little bit more. Okay. And this part also needs to go back a little bit and the top part here as well. So I'm going to select these two and bring them in. And this one looks a little bit too large. So let's bring that one in as well. And it's looking pretty good now. And actually, I think it's a good idea to add a little bit more control points down here and make it a small wave that passes through here as well. So I'm going to insert some control points here and here. And I'm going to bring it out like this. So you can see there's a small wave like this. So I guess this is pretty acceptable for now. I can return to it later and make further adjustments, and it will update automatically on the surface. Finally, let's also talk about some construction details that can affect the rest of the process. Now, in reality, this is not just a surface, and we also have a backside here that is connected to the wall. Basically, these vertical slices are bolted or glued to a back panel or to the wall directly, and it has a small thickness behind the surface. So let's model that as well. I'm going to go with a very small number like 5 centimeters, one from the top and one from the bottom. Like that. And let's also connect them together and join them. And now let's extrude it all the way to the other side of the wall. Now we have this backside, and the next step is to join it with the surface. And the reason I'm joining it is that when we cut our profiles from the wall, it should give us one closed curve instead of several open curves that are exploded or not joined together. And this facilitates our workflow. So I'm going to join them together, and as you can see, Rhino gives me a message that the joint command broke history on one object. This means that the curves no longer update the surface, which is okay in this case, because we have no surface anymore. Now we have a polysurface that is comprised of a surface and a backside. So I'm going to hit Okay, and in the future, if I need to return to this and make some changes, I'm going to delete the surface and create another one by lofting these curves. So now we have an open polysurface. And the reason it's not closed is because the two sides are still open, and it's not really important here because all we care about is that when we cut our profiles from these directions, it gives us a continuous and closed curve. So that's what we are going to do in the next video, and we're going to cut our curves from this base model. 4. the 2d profiles: In this video, we are going to create our TD profiles from the Treaty model. And to do that, I'm going to introduce two commands. The first one is called section. It's a very simple command, so let's see how it's done. I'm going to type section. And it asks me for objects to cut. So I'm going to select my wall and hit Enter. Now, all I have to do is to just draw a line that passes through the object, and once I click, you can see I get my section as simple as that. And we notice that the command still stays active, meaning that I can draw additional lines and get other sections within the same command. So I can keep drawing lines like this and get other sections. Notice how the sections are oriented in the direction of the line that I draw. So that's the basic functionality of the command. And once I hit space or enter, I get my curves. So this is the result of the command. Now, notice that the direction of these sections that these sections are produced is perpendicular to the Cplane. To see that better, let's change our Cplane a little bit. For example, I'm going to run the Ciplane command and rotate it in the direction by 45 degrees, like so. And let's repeat the section command. And draw a line here. And now you see that the section is rotated to be perpendicular to the construction plane. So any additional lines that I draw will have the same direction. So now that we understand how this works, let's get back and explain some of the options of the command briefly. So I'm going to reset my sea plane by going to the word sea plane and the top view. Now, let's start the command again, and I'm going to select my object and hit Enter. Now we are presented with some options up here, and the first one is called extend section, which is set to no. So let's enable that and draw another line here. You can see now that I no longer have to pass my line through the entire object. So what this does is basically it draws an infinite line based on the direction that I specify and uses it for cutting the sections. Now, sometimes I want to specify exactly which part to be cut, but in other cases like this, it doesn't matter. So I'm going to leave it on because I don't have any objects in the scene and also it facilitates our workflow. So the next option is called assigned properties, which is set to by current layer. And what this means is that the newly created sections will end up in the same layer that is activated currently in Rhino. So if I, for example, activate layer one now, all the new sections will end up in layer one. So if I hit Enter, you can see that some of the sections are red and some of them are black, which means that the first ones went into the default layer and the new ones after I change the option, went into layer one. So let's control Z and repeat the command again. The other option that we have here, if you click it is by input object. Now, this means that they go in whatever layer that the input object exists. For example, because our wall exists in the default layer, the sections will also go into the default. I'm going to set it by current layer because this is more manageable and easier to select later. And now let's take a look at the third option, the output. This is set to curves only. Actually, we don't need to change that. And what this does is it has the ability to also produce hatch from the sections in case we have a section style applied to our object. In our project, we only want the profile curves. So I'm going to leave it at here. And lastly, the option group objects by section plane is set to know. What this option does is that in case we have several objects that are cut by the same line or we have objects with holes in them, it produces several closed curves. Now, if we enable this, it puts all of those objects in the same group. Now we are going to use this ability later when we are arranging our sections. But for now, I'm going to leave it at no. So now that we know the options, let's use the command to produce some sections from the wall. Now, I want my sections to be evenly distributed, meaning that the distance between two consecutive sections needs to be the same all throughout the wall. And to make sure of that, let's do a trick here. I'm going to draw a line in the same direction as the wall. And let's divide this line. For example, let's give it 15 or 20. I'm going to go with 15, and this makes sure that if I start the sections from here, the distance between the sections will stay the same. So now let's start the section command and select our object and just start drawing lines. I'm also going to activate Otome to make sure they are perpendicular to the object itself. Now because we have extent section enabled, we don't have to pass the lines through the entire object. So we can quickly draw lines and get our sections. Okay, that was a pretty quick process, but this is actually not the spacing that we want. We want it to be much smaller, and as a result, the number of sections would be much higher. And that can become quite time consuming. We have a much faster way to do this. So let's introduce the contour command. You can think of the contour command as an automated version of the section command, and they are actually very similar. So let's see how it works in action. I'm going to delete these and type in contour. And select my object and hit Enter. And now it asks me for a base point. This is the point from which the sections begin. So I'm going to align this point with the beginning of the wall here. And actually, it doesn't have to lie on the wall itself. It just has to be aligned with it. So I'm going to click somewhere here, and next it wants me to specify a direction. And unlike section where this line would determine the section orientation, and it would be aligned with this line, contour, the actual sections or contours will be placed perpendicular to this line. So if I draw this parallel to my wall, the resulting sections would be perpendicular to it. So this is the good direction. So I'm going to click somewhere here, and the length of this line doesn't matter. It just is used to specify a general direction. I'm going to click here, and next, it asks me for a distance. And this distance is basically the distance between two consecutive sections. So I'm going to use a very small number here, like 10 centimeters. And it enter. Now, you can see that it produced sections across the object with a ten centimeter spacing, and it did it all in one go. So you can already see why this command is better compared to section because it takes care of the hard work for us, and we don't have to individually create these sections. And from a design perspective, this is ideal because we often have to go back and forth and explore different options before settling on a design, and we want this to be as fast as possible. So now that you have seen how this command works, let's delete this. And now let's see what options we have with this command. So let's run the command again. And select our objects, hit Enter. You can see that we have the exact same options as the section command up here with the addition of the range option. Those other three work exactly the same, so I'm going to skip them and click on Range. Now, it wants us to specify start point, so I'm going to pick here and also an end point. So let's pick here. And I'm going to accept the distance that we had already and hit Enter. Now, what it did is that it created sections only between these two endpoints, and it skipped the rest of the object. And that's the difference. Normally, the contour produces sections throughout the entire object, but here we have the ability to specify which part of it is cut. And this is desirable in many situations, but in our case, we want the entire wall to be cut. So I'm not going to use this option. So let's delete these and run the command again. And select our object, our base point and our direction. And for the distance, I want wooden slices with a width of, let's say, 4 centimeters and the gap between them for, let's say, 3 centimeters. So it would be a total of 7 centimeters. I'm going to type 0.07, hit Enter, and there we have our sections. Now we are pretty much finished here, and we can proceed in the next video by talking about how to lay them out on the ground plane and ways to automate it. But as a finishing touch for this video, let's see how this looks in three D. So I'm going to extrude all of these by 4 centimeters. Okay, so now it's extruded, and it took almost 40 seconds to finish. A tip on reducing this time would be to extrude them part by part, so they won't take as much time. Okay, so now let's take a look at these in D in the rendered mode. And let's also change this color so we can see it better. Now, the parametric wall looks quite okay. So I'm going to accept this and proceed in the next video. 5. arranging the profiles: Now that we have our model, we are going to create some construction documents from it by placing the profiles on the X Y plane. In this way, we can export to the document that can be used for cutting. So to demonstrate, I'm going to manually perform this operation on two of these profiles. So let's copy them here. Basically, what we want to do is we have to rotate them once around the Z axis and once again along the X axis. And also, we need to create some spacing between them like this so they don't intersect. And finally, we have to place them on the XY plane. So to do that, normally, we have to drag the gumball type zero and hit Enter like that. I'm also going to introduce another command to facilitate this later. So that's the manual method, and this is quite time consuming. So let's explore two ways that we can automate this process. The first method involves using a command called distribute. So before using it on the profiles, let's see how it works. So I'm going to draw a couple of boxes here. And let's perform the command on these boxes and then explain what it does. So you can find the command on the transform in line objects. And it's actually down here and it's called distribute Objects. However, I'm going to run it by using the shortcut because it's faster. So just type distribute, hit Enter, and now it presents us with some options. I'm going to pick this x here, and that's it. What it basically did was to equalize the distance between these objects. And let's control Z and perform it again to see the other options. Now, the first four options are basically dealing with direction. We can pick any direction we want for distribution, but it already has X Y and Z directions. And in our case, we're looking for the Y direction because our profiles are arranged in the Y direction. And the next option called mode is now set to center. The other option is gap. So if you change the mode, it switches between gap and center. And the difference between them is that in gap mode, the spacing is measured between the objects, but in center mode, the spacing is measured between the centers of the objects. In other words, it ignores the thickness of the objects. So let's see how each of these works. So if I set it to gap and pick an axis, now let's measure the distance between the objects. And as you can see, the internal distance between these two objects is now exactly 5 meters. However, if I repeat the command in center mode and pick the axis, now, that five meter distance is measured from center to center. And as you can see, it's exactly 5 meters. And the final option, spacing is basically self evident. So you can type any number here and the spacing becomes that number. However, it has another option, and once you click it, it presents you with the automatic option. Now, what this does is that it preserves the position of the first and the last item in these objects and tries to distribute the others between them with the same spacing. So let's select it and pick the axis here. And you can see that it space the objects evenly between these two endpoints, and instead of a number, it automatically determines that spacing here. So that's how this command works. And now that we know that, let's perform it on our profiles and see how they look. So let's select our objects and the select these. And for good measure, I'm going to make a copy of these profiles here and run the distribute command. I'm going to accept the spacing of five and pick the Y axis. And now our objects are distributed evenly across the wide direction, and that's pretty much how we use the distributed command to evenly space our profiles. However, this is not the only way to do this, and we also can use the flow command to perform this operation. So let's see how it works. I have to mention that the flow command is a very powerful command in Rhino, and covering the entire range of its applications is beyond the scope of this course. Here, we only use its simple application in arranging some objects along a curve or a line in this case. So with that being said, let's demonstrate how it works with a simple example. So I'm going to the top board here, and let's add a text here, for example, with this default text that we have here. And I'm going to draw one line behind it beneath the text and another one here. Let's also explore this to get curves here because the flow command requires geometry objects. So let's see how it works in action. I'm going to run flow, select my objects, hit Enter, select the base curve and the target curve. And that's pretty much what it did. So it basically transforms objects from a base curve to a target curve. And to see a better example, let's draw a non linear curve. For example, something like this. And if I repeat the command, only on this target curve, you see that the text is pretty much warped along that curve. And that's what makes it ideal for modeling some complex geometry. For our purposes, we need a very simple version of this without deforming the objects. So in our case, in our example here, I would run the flow command. Select the objects. But here we have an option called rigid, and I'm going to check that option. It means that the objects won't be deformed and select my base curve and target curve. And as you can see, it preserved the structure of the objects, of the individual letters here. And instead of letters, now we are going to give it our profiles to distribute along a line here for us. So before using it on our profiles, let's also explore another option that has to be checked before we use it. So let's select the objects hit Enter. You also have to make sure that the stretch option is set to yes. Otherwise, it won't distribute it across the entire object here, and only it will go as far as the base curve length is drawn here. So, for example, if I set it to no and set rigid to yes, that's how it would work. So with that being said, let's see how it works on our profiles. I'm going to the perspective view. Let's delete the ones that we had here and let's draw a line. So for example, like this, let's select our profiles and run the flow command. So for the base curve, I'm going to use the lower edge of our wall model here. So I'm going to select this and make sure a stretch is enabled, and rigid also is enabled, and select a target curve. And that's it. So it distributed our profiles along this curve or line, and that's another way that we can distribute objects so now that we know how these two methods work, let's talk about how to fix the rotation of these profiles once we distribute them. So for our purposes, I'm going to undo this and use the distribute command here because it gives me more control over the spacing of the objects. So let's select them again, make a copy, run distribute, and pick the axis. So that's what we have so far. So now let's introduce the box edit command, which allows us to individually rotate objects without losing their position in the process. But before introducing the box edit command, a logical question is, why not use the gumball itself to rotate these objects? And it actually works in some scenarios, but not for all the rotations that we need. For example, if I rotate them around the Y axis, the green one, it's going to work because they all share the same axis here. For example, I can rotate them by 90 degrees and they all become horizontal. However, in the next step, I have to rotate them again so that the profiles are facing upwards. And for that, I need to rotate them around the X axis. However, if I do that, you can see that they all share the same center, and in other words, we lose the correct positioning that the objects had after distribute. And basically what we should do is to take individual objects here and rotate them by 90 degrees and keep repeating this for every individual profile, which is time consuming. So that's why we need to find another way to rotate these objects other than the Gumbo. So I'm going to control Z here. And let's now introduce the box edit command. To run this command, we can just type box edit. Or alternatively, we can come to the transform tab and look for this icon, a sphere caged in a box. So either way, once we click it, we are presented with this tab here. So instead of some options appearing up there, it gives us an entire tab, and this tab actually has a lot of options. So it's best to dock it somewhere so we can see all the options together like this. And right now it's grade out. So it requires us to select some objects. And let's select our profiles. And now that it's activated, let's talk about how this tab works. Basically, it gives us the ability to perform several transformations in one big step instead of performing them in different commands or steps. So instead of moving our object first and then rotating it and then scaling it in different commands, we can just type numbers for each of these transformations here and it gives us a preview of it. And once we are satisfied, we can click Apply and it applies it on our geometry. But the specific reason that we are using this tab here is this checkmark, transform objects individually. This basically means that instead of rotating all of our objects using a shared center, each object is treated separately and is rotated around its own center, meaning that the relative position of the objects won't be changed, and that is ideal for our purposes because we want to keep the order of the item placement here. Before we use that option, let's see how the command works in general. So let's give an arbitrary rotation to every object in here. And you can see it gives us a gray colored preview. I'm also going to move them a little bit like that, and let's also scale them a little bit, as well. And once we are satisfied, we can just click Apply and it changes our objects. So that's the basic functionality of this tab. So let's control Z, and this time, I'm going to check this option, and let's also zoom in on one of the profiles so we can see better what's happening here. Now, we need to find the correct combination of rotations to perfectly place them on the ground. Now the challenge here is once we rotate the objects in one axis, the relationship between the three axes can change, and we need to do a little bit of trial and error to find the correct combination here. So let's start with the Z axis here. Okay, it seems to be the correct one. So I'm going to rotate it by 90 degrees here, and you can see that every profile is rotated around its own separate axis, which is calculated by the bounding box right now. So and that is the first angle. For the second one, let's rotate them around the y axis, the green axis. And in this case, we need to rotate them by negative number. So let's give it -90 degrees. This is because once we look at from the top view, we want the profiles to be exactly in the correct orientation. And this is ideal. So now that we are satisfied, we can just click Apply and it finishes up the command. But before that, we also need to place them on the ground plane as well. Right now, they are hanging in the air somewhere. So we can do that later with another command. But box edit also offers this option. So because we already know that the base of the wall is on the ground, we can change one of these options here, for example, set a Z to minimum, and this basically means that it considers the minimum point of the bounding box for performing the rotations and not the center of it. However, right now, you reset the command, and we have to type in these numbers once again. So let's type them again here. And now you can see that they are rotated and placed on the ground. So we can click Apply and that finishes the transformation. And that's it. So if I go to the top view, you can see that the profiles are now placed on the XY plane. The only problem is that they are on the Y axis. So I want them to be on the horizontal axis, and for that, I can just do a simple rotate command, for example, round rotate and for the center, I'm going to type zero to rotate them around the origin of the file here. So I'm going to rotate them by 90 degrees, and that's it. And that concludes our video on arranging these profiles on the XY plane. So to recap, we took care of the spacing between the profiles using the distribute command. We also can do it using the flow command, which is a more advanced command, but a simple implementation of that advanced command can do this for us. And next for fixing the rotation, we use the box edit command to perform this transformation on all of the objects at once. 6. numbering: Okay, so now we have laid out our pieces into the space and we can export these and use them for construction. However, there is a challenge. When people are assembling the pieces, they need a way to tell the correct order which piece comes after the other. And to help with that, we have to add some numbers to the pieces to indicate that correct order. And this number should fall inside the piece because we want to carve that number from the actual wooden piece so that people can read it and sort the pieces before assembling. So let's see how it's done. Before anything, let's make a new layer for our text objects and call it text. And we're going to add our text to this layer. So I'm going to run the text command and call the first one, the number one and place it here. So let's also fix the size and give it a size of 0.2 or 0.3. And let's place it here. So it falls inside the piece and it should be okay. And next, we have to copy this in all of the pieces and make sure that they fall inside the piece. So I'm going to use array here, and for the number in the direction, let's count the number of profiles that we have. And all we have to do is to just select them, and it tells us that we have selected 86 curves, one text, and that's it. So we got 86 curves or profiles here, and I'm going to use this number. So in the X direction, I'm going to type 86 and one in the other ones in the other directions. For the spacing, I'm going to use this straight line at the back of our wall as a reference point because it stays fixed in all of the profiles. And I'm going to array this and click here. Now, before we confirm the command, let's check the preview and make sure that all the pieces are actually inside, sorry, all the texts are actually inside the pieces. Okay, we got some texts that are outside. Let's also check from the middle here. Okay, a possible reason for this might be because of the box edit command. Remember, we use the bounding box when determining the center for each object. And because our objects have different thicknesses or widths here, that causes them to have different center positions, and this disrupts the spacing that we have specified in the distribute command. So we get some slight differences like this in the placement of our pieces. To fix that, we need to redo the box edit command, but use a fixed point that exists in all of the pieces. And for our work, I think the ideal point would be the edge of the left edge of our pieces, which is the straight line that exists in all of our pieces that are cut from the object. So that's the way we should do it. Otherwise, we have to manually move all of these text objects inside the profiles, which would be time consuming and actually defeats the purpose of all this automation that we are doing. So let's cancel that out here and try to do that. So I'm going to the perspective view, and let's distribute these profiles again. So I'm going to select them. Just make sure not to select these. I have to delete them later, but I'm going to keep them now for comparison. So let's make a copy here and use distribute. And so I'm going to set the spacing to five and use the Y axis. Now, this time when we use the box Edit command, I'm going to use these options here to make sure that this edge is used as the pivot point for rotation. So I'm going to also set the minimum X here. The Y location, actually, it doesn't matter because object these objects don't have any thickness in the Y direction. So I'm going to do the rotation again and this time, you can see that it actually rotates around this straight line here, like a door hinge. So let's set it to 90 degrees and set the other one to -90, just like we did before and apply this. Now, this should fix our problem. So I'm going to rotate all of these by 90 degrees. Like, so, and let's move them down here to compare them with the previous profiles. Just making sure that they are rotated correctly. Okay, so I'm going to take this number and copy it up here. And place it in my profile. Now, logically, this should fall inside all the profiles because all of them share this five centimeter thickness wall behind them. So let's use the array again and type 86 and start copying. Okay, so now let's check the other pieces. Seems to be working. And also, let's check some of the ones from the middle of the array from some of the middle profiles that we have. Okay, it's perfectly aligned inside the profile here. And let's check some of the last ones. That's pretty good. So I'm going to accept this, and in this way, we can solve this issue that we had before. So let's delete the other profile It works better in the top viewpoard. So I'm going to select these and hit delete. And let's also bring these down a little bit. And something that we have to be careful about is that as the number increases, it becomes two digits. So for example, the last piece for the last piece, the number is 86 here, and you can see that this six falls outside of our piece. So we need a smaller font here, font size here. So let's select all of our text using cell text command, since we know that we have no other text in the file. And going to decrease this number until it falls inside of our range, inside of our profile. And that seems to be okay. So let's also check a couple of other profiles here. And here comes the next challenge. Now, this is where we hit a limitation on using Rhino without grasshopper or any other plugins. We have to manually change each of these numbers consecutively. So we have to actually select these and type one, two, three, four, so on. And actually, if you do this fast, it can take a couple of minutes only. However, if you're planning on using this process for other objects as well, you might need a way to automate this as well. So let's take a look at a slightly more advanced way of doing this. You probably have heard about scripts in treaty softwares, and that is one way we can automate repetitive tasks inside Rhino. And, of course, there are other ways, for example, using plugins that do this or using grasshopper that can do this in a breeze. But since grasshopper requires additional skills which are beyond this course, and also we don't want to use any outside plugins here, only native Rhino tools. So this is a good excuse to actually take a look at the Python script editor. And don't worry. We're not going to teach scripting here because that requires its own full course and is a totally different skill, and learning it is actually harder and more difficult than using grasshopper. So I'm going to use AI tools to give us a very simple script that can take care of this problem for us. So it's an advanced solution, but very easy to do. So let's first see how the Python editor looks. So I'm going to type Python and you can see that two commands come here. We're looking for the second one, Edit Python script. And here we are presented with a blank screen with a blank page here or file that requires us to type something here. This is where the code goes. And don't worry. Even if you don't know the basic concepts of programming, for example, what a variable is, what a function is, so on, you don't need any of this. So we are assuming that we are designers who are not familiar with programming and just want to use a very simple script to take care of a simple yet frustrating problem for us. For this, I have used an AI tool. So I used copilot here, but you can use any other AI engine, and the general results should be the same. So the thing about writing a prompt for getting a piece of code is that you have to be very specific about it and tell it exactly what you want. So let's start with this. I'm using Rhino. I have several text objects arranged in the X direction. Okay. And I want a Python script that allows me to select a specific text objects and turn them into consecutive numbers from left to right, starting from one. Now, that's a very specific prompt. So let's see what it comes up with. So here's the piece of code, and it also offers some interesting explanations, which in this case, we don't need. So let's just copy the code here. And back in Rhino, let's paste the code here. And without any explanation, let's just run it and see how it works. So for running the code, you need to click this green arrow here. And it wants us to select text objects to re number. So for this, I'm going to select all the objects inside the text layer and hit Enter. And if I close this, you can see that it did the job. This is one, two, three, and so on. So let's check some of the numbers from the middle here, 31, 32, and let's check the last ones. The last one is 86, 85, and so on. So that worked perfectly. So this is a very interesting example of how you can use AI tools to automate things that can otherwise take some time. We use this code without understanding how it works, and that's totally okay because we are not programmers. But for people who want to know a little bit more about it, let's break down the general structure of the code a little bit. So I'm going to bring up the Python editor again. And in here, we basically are selecting some objects and showing this prompt to the user. So basically, you can change this string or text to anything that you like. Then we sort these objects based on the coordinates, and finally, we go through every item in that list and change the text to a consecutive number that is increasing one by one. And that's all there is to it. That's the general steps. The rest of the code is just some bureaucratic steps, so to speak, that you get to know once you understand the basics of the Python language and also study the documentation of Rhino scripting. So, for example, even if you are a professional Python programmer, you still need to study the documentation to understand the names of the libraries. And know which functions exist inside of them. And that takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of patience and time to learn the syntax of the language and how to work with it. But for non professional people like myself who want to occasionally use a simple script to take care of a very specific need, a great idea would be to study code samples and take a look at those or ask AI. And in this case, we can just reverse engineer these samples and, for example, understand the names of libraries or in case we forget how to, for example, define a loop inside Python. I can just take a look at it and remember it. And this is just some general tips for people who are interested in it. But apart from this, we don't need to deal with these details. So now that we are done with numbering the pieces here, the next video, we are going to talk about how to export these and the options that we have that can enhance the quality of these exports. 7. exporting: In this video, we're going to talk about some export options that can affect the quality of the final result. So Rhino supports many formats, including formats for treaty printing and laser cutting and so on. And there are also some general formats that can be read by many different softwares, such as the DWG format, which is the standard autocat format, and also the DXF format, which stands for drawing exchange file that is specifically designed for facilitating exchange between different softwares. Now, this format is also quite popular with CNC and laser cutting machines. So we are going to focus on this format and the different options that it has to enhance the quality of the export. And by quality, I mean ensuring the correct scale and also making sure that the curves preserve their smoothness after the export. So let's export some objects and take a look at the result. I'm going to select all my profiles here and just make sure not to select the actual treaty object to the left. So from the file menu, we're going to use Export Selected. And it presents us with a dialogue where we can specify the location and also the format. So because I have used DXF before, it shows me the format here, but you have to use this drop down and actually find it. So let's choose it and give it a name and hit save. Once you do that, it presents you with an options menu, and this is where we determine the quality of the result. So right now it is set to one of the templates, 2007 lines. Let's hit Let's click on Edit scheme here to change the settings in detail. Basically, it has two tabs, general, and curves. In general, it deals with some options regarding treaty objects. So I'm not going to deal with this. The only option that matters to us is the autocat version, which means the lowest version that can read the file. Actually, 2007 is a good version because it's not too old to lack some capabilities and not too recent so that some people cannot open the file. So I'm going to leave it at here. But in the curves menu, we have options on how to translate rhino objects to autocat objects. As you know, curves in Rhino are infinitely precise because they are nerves objects. And the equivalent of a nerves curve in autocat is called a spline. And this is a default setting. And our objects, however, are several joint curves which are called polycurves here. So these are translated as polylines in autocat, and polyline is basically a collection of lines that are connected to each other. So we can set these two splines to have infinite precision here. However, some CNC machines do not support splines, and they require us to give them polylines. So I'm going to leave it at polyline, and we're going to explore some settings here and see how they affect the result. For now, let's accept the defaults here and okay. Now let's open autocat and take a look at the result there. So let's open the file here and take a look at it. I'm going to double click the middle mouse button to zoom on the objects, and let's zoom in here and take a look at this profile. It looks pretty smooth here. So once we hover over it, you can see it's a two d polyline. And when we click it, you can see that it has a lot of vertices. Or in other words, it is comprised of many lines. This is actually a good sign, which means that the object has a high quality. So I guess this is an optimum settings for export. So to compare, I'm going to change the settings a little bit to lower the quality and then compare it with this file. So let's get back to Rhino. I'm going to export again and this time, I'm going to change the settings a little bit. So in the curve section, we got some options to change the curve quality. And this is called curve tessellation parameters. And we can change this in three different ways. The first one is maximum angle, and I'm going to use this one. So how we should interpret this is that the higher the angle is, the lower the quality of the curve we're going to get. So I'm going to set it to a pretty high number like 50 degrees and temporarily save this into the template and hit okay. So let's get back to AutoCAD and see how it affected the result. So let's open file number two and take a look at the profiles. Okay, so you can see it already has a much lower quality compared to the other ones. So I'm going to copy a couple of these and put them next to the profiles in the first file so you can see the difference better. So the reason these are smooth is because it has a lot of vertices in it, and the reason this is low quality and jagged is because it has a much fewer lines and vertices that comprise the object. And that's the main difference. So to fix it, back in Rhino, we have to make sure that when exporting, we set this option, the curve destilation parameters to a proper amount. So before this, it was set to two, which is a good quality for export. So that's it for the options. And if you pay attention to this, we're going to have a high quality export. Another thing to keep in mind here is that sometimes the CNC machine requires objects in millimeters, while in Rhino, we might have modeled them in meters. In this case, it's always a good idea to double check this scale before sending the file for cutting. So I'm going to measure this. It's right now three units, which means it's in meters. So we have two options here. We can either scale it in Rhino or in AutoCAD. So either way, it gives us the same result. So I'm going to do this in AutoCAD and just apply on a scale with a factor of thousand to the objects. So that they are measured in millimeters. Now, if I measure the length of this profile here, it reads 3,000, which is the correct scale, and that's it. So finally, we are done. In this course, you learned how to model the parametric wall inside of Rhino and more importantly, how to prepare it for construction. And all of these steps were done using only native Rhino tools without any help from grasshopper. And I hope that this course was able to increase your proficiency in using Rhino. Thank you for your time.