following are instructions indicating how to properly scale your roofscape and site models in rhino. this will, in essence, ensure that you are working at full scale in rhino. that is, one foot in rhino is one foot in the real world. this will help you determine the size of spaces, etc. for human occupation.
1. in rhino, type ‘units’ at the command prompt. change the units to feet.
2. draw a plane at 96′x96′. this represents the 24″x24″ base of your site (massing) model for most of you whose site (massing) model is at 1/4″=1′-0″. For those of you whose site (massing) model is 1/8″=’1-0″, the plane should be 192′x192′.
3. scale your roofscape and site model in rhino so that it fits within the 96′x96′ plane as it does in your physical model.
following are instructions indicating how to cut plans and sections from rhino:
1. create a new file with a filename such as plancuts.3dm, etc. make sure the units are feet.
2. import, not insert, your site geometry, roofscape geometry and 96′x96′ plane. you used insert for creating the master file with the components of the roofscape and the site geometry as blocks. in this case, you will be importing so that the geometry of site and roofscape is not a block but is ‘live’ in this file.
3. scale all geometry so that the plane is 24″x24″ (2′x2′). this process effectively makes your geometry scaled to either 1/4″=1′-0″ if your plane was 96′x96′ or 1/8″=1′-0″ if your plane was 192′x192′. that’s the scale of the physical massing model and will be the scale of your plans and sections.
4. in the top view, create a plane that is bigger than the geometry of the site and roofscape.
5. in the front or side view, move it so that it is located at an appropriate place to cut a plan.
6. copy the plane so that it is located in other appropriate places to cut plans.
7. create two layers. one called: plancut. one called: plan.
8. make the plancut layers current.
9. enter ’section’ at the command prompt. select all objects at the prompt. select one end of the plane and then the other at the prompt. hit enter.
10. this will create a ‘cut’ along the plane through whatever portion of the roofscape and site the plane intersects.
11. it will remain highlighted after you finish the command. keystroke ctrl+g to group the lines.
12. make the plans layer current. turn off the plancut layer.
13. enter ’split’ at the command prompt. select all objects, use one of the planes as the object to do the splitting.
14. delete all objects above the plane that you split with.
15. hide all planes. enter make2d in the top view. select all objects. group all geometry.
16. this will make a flattened view of all geometry below the cut. it will also locate this at 0,0 which is not where the section cut will be located. you will need to manually line up the make2d geometry with the section cut geometry.
17. by now you should have make2d geometry grouped on the plan layer and section cut geometry grouped on the plancut layer
18. export the section cut geometry as an .ai file called sectioncut.ai or equal. export the make2d geometry as an .ai file called make2d.ai or equal. important: make sure you ’select the keep rhino units’ option and NOT the ’snapshot of current view’ option. this will ensure that the scale of the geometry will be accurate.
19. open a new illustrator file at 36″x36″. open the sectioncut.ai file and the make2d.ai file.
20. in the new illustrator file, make two layers. one called sectioncut or equal and one called make2d or equal.
21. make the sectioncut.ai file active. select all objects. select edit>copy or ctrl+c.
22. make the new file active. make the sectioncut layer current. select edit>paste or ctrl+v. group all geometry.
23. make the make2d.ai file active. select all objects. select edit>copy or ctrl+c.
24. make the new file active. make the make2d layer current. select edit>paste or ctrl+v. group all geometry.
25. make sure the linework of the section and the linework of the make2d are oriented currently relative to each other.
26. make sure the stroke color of all linework is black.
27. change the stroke weight of the sectioncut linework to something heavy. perhaps 1.0 or 2.0
28. change the stroke weight of the make2d linework to something light. perhaps .5 or .25.
29. repeat for other plans and section cuts
the purpose of the two commands in rhino, the two layers, the two ai files, etc. is to be able to manipulate the linework of the section cut and the rest of the linework independently and easily. you will need to dial in the stroke weights relative to how it prints. further manipulation of the stroke of the make2d linework is encouraged to produce a deep reading of the plans and sections. in other words, it is just like modulating the lineweights of your pencils or pens in hand drawing.