Sunday, May 17, 2009

Rhino View Basics

There's been an issue come up from time to time on the newsgroup with apparent confusion over how the standard viewport views in Rhino work, that the Right or Left views seem to show the "wrong" side.


The above illustrates how Rhino defines the standard view directions, and is familiar to anyone who's had to take a drafting class. If your first introduction to "drafting" is Rhino, then perhaps some explanation is in order.

The confusion comes from the fact that with something like a car or a plane, the "Left" view shows what is commonly referred to as the "Right" side, it's referenced from the point of view of someone sitting in it. That's not how Rhino works, to put it most simply it's using more general-purpose principles.

You can always make up your own views that show you the projection you want with the label you want, but this is indeed the view convention used by all CAD users in all fields. I did not get different instructions on how to make drawings from the one car designer in the faculty of my Industrial Design school, or my introductory Architecture course, or my Engineering drafting class.