Making Pockets in Rhino

CNC Fabrication Support

aaronm — 2014-09-18T02:48:47-04:00 — #1

Hey @jonathan and @pbeseda

I made this quick screencast - turn off the audio (I'll do that next time) and play in HD and at 2x speed.

Am I making pockets in the optimal way?

jonathan — 2014-09-18T07:39:00-04:00 — #2

This all looks fine to me.

aaronm — 2014-09-18T11:48:58-04:00 — #3

Thanks @jonathan - one thing I learned after making this is that I can just draw a surface instead of making a polyline into a surface with the PlanarSrf command.

jonathan — 2014-09-18T12:39:25-04:00 — #4

You could also extrude a closed curve and then use the cap command to achieve the same results.

aaronm — 2014-09-18T13:36:20-04:00 — #5

Thanks @jonathan - will you send me more details on that?

pbeseda — 2014-09-18T15:26:45-04:00 — #6

This looks like a good way. When extruding a closed curve you can also specify the "Solid" option which will usually achieve the same results as the "cap" command.

Here are my 2 main methods:

For interior through cuts I use two closed curves (one exterior and one interior) and extrude them both at the same time. This will treat the inside curve as a hole.

For blind pockets (5mm deep in 19mm plywood) the boolean difference tool is ideal. I make sure that the object representing the pocket is taller than the object being subtracted from. Sometimes Rhino does not like to subtract things that share faces, making it taller creates a complete intersection.

aaronm — 2014-09-19T16:36:41-04:00 — #7

@jonathan & @pbeseda

In the video below, I used the boolean difference and the object I subtracted from was left with an annoying curve outline of the section I tried to remove. How can I deal with this?

aaronm — 2014-09-19T16:44:20-04:00 — #8

@jonathan & @pbeseda

I figured out how to turn on control points and delete them - that seems less than optimal though:

aaronm — 2014-09-19T16:52:18-04:00 — #9

I guess I can also explode the polyline and delete the line segments that are in the way.

pbeseda — 2014-09-19T16:52:39-04:00 — #10

@AaronM That curve seems like it was there from the beginning. Since the booleandifference command only affects the two polysrfs you select, it stays where it started. You could delete it and use DupBorder on that top surface if you wanted to recreate the new profile of that object.

jonathan — 2014-09-20T06:11:15-04:00 — #11

Here is a list of Rhino 4 and 5 Training Manuals, Support topics and References from Mcneel office. There are some good online tutorials to be found here too.

http://www.rhino3d.com/learn