Moving From Rhino To Fusion360

[Anonymous]

Since AD bought TSplines and VSR and will no longer support them in Rhino, I decided to take advantage of the black Friday deal to purchase Fusion360.  I'm just getting started and like the parameterization aspect, but I seem to be missing some tools.  Tools far more important than TSplines or VSR.

How do I accomplish this in Fusion360:

There's several other tools I have yet to find, but this is the most critical.

[michallach81]

I love Fusion, but in terms of modeling abilities it's far, far (...) far behind Rhino. Today Fusion is good for consumer goods products, with rather top-down design approach. If I would be you, I would be modeling in Rhino, while testing from where in design process I could switch to Fusion.

Because Fusion is more solid modeler than surface modeler, I wouldn't expect to see tools like VSR at all. If any improvement in modeling, it will be more like tools in Solidworks or Inventor, which are still not a match for Rhino with VSR.

[Mike.Grau]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for asking about that.

I have the feeling you are looking for the "Project to surface" feature?

Here is also one of our YouTube tutorials which will help you to use that feature.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dfxm8irfEhc

If I remember correct, minute 22 might become really interesting, when the grip will be modeled.

I hope this helps.

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

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@michallach81 wrote:

I wouldn't expect to see tools like VSR at all. If any improvement in modeling, it will be more like tools in Solidworks or Inventor, which are still not a match for Rhino with VSR.

I see TSplines is in Fusion, but I thought VSR made it's way into the product as well?  Perhaps I misread the statement from AutoDesk that they no longer are supporting Rhino plugins.  What is VSR included in?

I'm fairly upset with McNeel and AutoDesk.  McNeel did not buy and incorporate their two most popular plugins into Rhino and AutoDesk said they would continue to support Rhino and then abandoned that promise.

[Anonymous]

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@Mike.Grau wrote:

Hi @Anonymous,

I have the feeling you are looking for the "Project to surface" feature?

That simple example could use project to surface, but it's a far more powerful deformation tool.  With Flow/FlowAlongSrf, you define a pattern of target objects on a base object and map them to a target object, i.e. a spiraled curve or a cylindrical surface.  Using the UV coordinates of a source and destination object, it does a transformation on an object creating a morphed version. 

The array or 'pattern' tools in Fusion are extremely basic and I don't see them offering me much value.  My work, jewelry, requires creating an organic base shape (TSplines, VSR, surface modeling) and then positioning gemstones on that shape with a high level of accuracy.  If the stones are closer than .15mm, the edges overlap and they shatter when you push metal against them.  Over .3mm and the eye can see the space between stones.

I'm not sure why AD has ignored the tens of thousands of CAD users in our industry, but this move crippled us.  Almost all jewelry designers have TSplines and we were a major part of the user base.  Since the acquisition, I've come to peace working around the same massive bug everyday for 5 years.  This new announcement that they will not recompile the existing source for Rhino V6 is a very bitter pill to swallow.  

I still bought a license and will continue to play with Fusion.  So far though, it appears to be irrelevant to my field.

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous Well your fault to use Rhino 😉 Sorry I could not resist. I taught Rhino for many years before I switched to mature apps such as Alias or SolidThinking both kill Rhino instantly.

So I have a fairly good idea how you feel because when I went from Rhino/Alias to Fusion I did not grasp the philosophical differences which also explain the difference in tool sets.

I teach college level industrial design so I am quite familiar and fluid with both class A surfacing (while I hate it), parametric modeling, and sub-d sculpting.

If you want we could meet in Skype and I provide some answers to you how you can transition from R to F.

While to be honest I would not let go of Rhino anyway. Sometimes I build a design in Rhino and then load the outside surface in Fusion and finish the B surface with Fusions amazing solid modeling tools.

For example the flow surface thing is a part you HAVE to make in Rhino and then send to Fusion. Fusion does not (yet) have any deformation tools.

my Skype ID is: cekuhnen or give me a ring at: 715 309 9795

Claas

[Anonymous]

Thank you, @cekuhnen.  I will definitely take you up on that.  I'm very interested to know your thoughts on a better workflow/program than just using straight Rhino.  To give you an idea, here are some models I've done that are all TSplines and/or VSR (DNA band was grasshopper):

http://johnpaulsjewelers.com/ShareableImages.html

Jewelry is a weird one, man.  I'm making complicated models that get produced once.  That makes Alias's price not insignificant.  Even if I was at a manufacturer, I'd still be expected to turn out a new design with dozens of variants every day.  I spend a lot of painful time form finding and glueing things together.  If I mess up on the tolerances or engineering aspects, a lot of times I'm back at square one.  It's maddening.

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous well lucky that my mfa is in jewelry design 😉

rhino has has some good tools such as bend and twist or flow along surface.

however while in graduate school using rhino I never used it for jewelry work later.

i found sculpting and bending twisting and such faster in blender.

fusions 360 timeline and solid t-spline modeling is pretty powerful for that.

twisting parts can be done in moi rhino or blender to feed fusion.

did you ever use moi? I use that a lot with fusion.

there is a Russian guy who stoped using rhino and went full blender for his commercial jewelry.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ6uIdNnrHk

Anyway looking forward to chat with you - we need more jewelry people here

[lrsmithmi]

I've also been fighting moving from Rhino to Fusion for Jewelry work, because I'm on a Mac and have CNC but the Rhino CNC is expensive and last I looked it doesn't work on Mac. I find going into fluid shapes and trying to twist, curve, etc very difficult in Fusion. I get errors with Fusion trying to leave Sculpt but the "Repair Body" option doesn't identify anything wrong and I haven;t yet found tools to see edges, manifold surfaces, etc that I know exist in Rhino to get a more detailed look at the model surface.

I've been going back and forth with modeling in Rhino and then importing to Fusion. I've noticed some of my models Rhino has no problem with displaying and let me move around, while fusion just crawls trying to display the model. There is a definite shift from Rhino modeling methodology to Fusions Parameteric modeling.

[Anonymous]

Have you checked out MoI3d? It's got the Flow tool and also has an ArrayGem command specifically for setting stones.

Martin.

[cekuhnen]

@lrsmithmi 

as @Anonymous says Moi is a nice substitute for rhino with all the deformation tools I think you would need.

the nice thing is also that moi can import obj convert face to face to nurbs and then take the polysurfsce and smooth it like a sub-d surface.

complex t-spline models are slow and specifically slow in fusion. I break TS bodies up into different t-spline feature in the timeline.

fusion does not have any bend or twist tools - that's why I do that type of work in blender and import the data in fusion. Two apps I know but works incredibly well.

i hate being limited by what one app can do so I see apps like tools and all apps as a design environment

Fusion in contrast to rhino while being parametric also crunches through complex fillet situations where rhino just fails. (Since I know it - it never got usable there)

the cam module in fusion I see pretty easy to operate - give it a try.

[cekuhnen]

@lrsmithmi

if fusion is however a problem maybe look into SolidThinking. Their app evolve is what rhino should be. Parametric surface modeler with sub-d to nurbs and Thea render engine build in.

not cheap but very powerful. I like it more than alias.

Jewelry can be a tricky thing for fusion - I think fusion is not really 100% made for it. Maybe ST and Fusion Cam could work for you.

[Anonymous]

 @Anonymous, yes I have a copy of MoI.  I like the tool, that I can copy/paste between MoI and Rhino, but didn't stick with it.  I found it too late.  I was already advanced/faster in Rhino and there wasn't a killer feature.   I was also fluent in Rhino scripting and had a library of tools.  The most important one lets me array along a curve using the surface normal for orientation with dynamic scaling and a static distance between objects.  That's a must for doing tapered rows of stones where you want the gem size to scale, but not the space between them.

@cekuhnen, just like MoI can convert faces to nurbs, Rhino's TSplines can convert a TSpline -> obj -> TSpline.  That's the reason I took advantage of the sale.  At the very least I'd be able to work with an updated, possibly parametric version of TSplines and pass it back into Rhino for everything else.  

Rhino still sucks at fillets, which is rooted in their kernel and likely to remain.  The V6 WIP adds an 'Edit', which assumes it worked first.  I'd be very interested in using Fusion for fillets and booleans.  I use 3DCoat for most of those operations now (here's my writeup and video).  I've gotten pretty good with it and use it for sculpting as well.  The latest version rivals the brushes in ZBrush.

Which SolidThinking package are you referring to, Inspire or Evolve?  I looked at some Evolve videos and really like what I see.  And I've heard nothing but good things about the Siemens kernel.

I haven't used Blender, but I'm following a guy using JewelCraft.  It's something to keep an eye on.

Another tool that I would really like is a boolean blend.  I know Modo has a plugin.  Rhino has Symvol which does the job beautifully...if you have a quad xeon box for it to run on 😛 

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

Well I started learning Rhino in grad school and that was 2004. So over the past 12 years I did not see any real improvement in fillets. This was the main reason I left Rhino.

Scripting and add-ons are great but when the most needed tool fillets fail then well whats the point ...

Fusion on the other side is to my experience incredible good at fillets. Currently they only offer G1 and a G2 option that rather looks like a G1 with a G2 start and not a true

G2 fillet because you cannot adjust weights for each side. Well sometimes for bigger areas then I build a secondary blend surface instead with loft. But I assume for jewelry

the G1 G2 options will be fine. Fusion also is good are filleting y connections and such.

At one of my clients who still uses Rhino because they all know it and for quick mock ups it is still faster than Fusion they send the hard edge model to SW to make the fillets

and then send it back to Rhino. hahahaha

SolidThinking Evolve costs around 1.500 so it is not cheap but Rhino is around 1000 but Evolve gives you first fillet tools that work, a parametric design history, and surface and 3d curve tools with good constraints like making a curve flow tangent onto a surface. I am not sure about scripting.

Modo is pretty expensive and I find Mesh Fusion cool for playing with ideas but junk when I take a look at the poly count density it produces.