Importing from Rhino

[pw8154]

I want to be able to import a file from Rhino and then produce a series of fab drawings of the various components.

Normally I would build the model in Autocad and use solprof to produce accurate views of the bits.

A client has sent a model exported from Rhino, but the surfaces are meshes, holes are polygonal, tubes are facetted - there are no solids.

I'm not sure if this is as good as I can expect, and I'm not sure where the problem lies.

Does it depend on how the items are modelled in Rhino?

There are open polysurfaces, closed polysurfaces, closed extrusions.....

Would it be better to import the Rhino 3dm files directly into Autocad?

Any suggestions or pointers to further reading welcome thanks.

[M_Hensley]

I recently got a Rhino file from a customer, and when I used IMPORT in AutoCAD and selected the 3dm file I got 3dsolids and surfaces. It could be the way the Rhino file was created, but you might get better results if you let AutoCAD do the the importing.

[pendean]

From Rhino you can export as .dwg with options: Solids, Meshesh, 3dFaces I believe. Not sure the IMPORT command has that flexibility, but it's worth asking for those files to find out.

Import 3DM files started in 2012: http://autodesk.blogs.com/between_the_lines/2012/02/import-rhino-3dm-file-into-autocad.html

[pw8154]

Thanks for your replies.

My client is aware that they can have difficulties working between Rhino and Autocad, and they sent a Rhino model that I opened directly in Autocad, and the solids are correct, though some are missing. However, their model is pretty rough so I'll be building my own model in Autocad, just using theirs for guidance.

I think I'd have to do a lot more experimenting if I seriously expected to import a Rhino model and use it as if it had been built in Autocad, but I'm sure that on some levels, the translation is fine.

Thanks again.