Rhino 3DM import issues

[stepalibre]

I imported a multibody part and encountered issues. This model was made in Grasshopper, importing it as a STEP file works perfectly however it is imported as an assembly. Importing it as a 3DM file works as a pseudo multibody part but with some models I get failed geometry which are often double curved, helical, piped or rotational surfaces of some kind. I have workarounds and in this case the wheels are only placeholder toruses.
I wonder if these issues are related to Alibre Design's limited support for surfacing or the 3DM importer.


The torus looks flattened out...

 

[stepalibre]

95% of the time 3DM files import without any problems. If it happens again I'll make a formal support ticket. Adding support for multibody parts would help reduce overhead when importing files with bodies and when making member/profile based designs.

SolidWorks Toolbox/Driveworks was hard to manage and I stopped using them years ago. As mentioned in Bolsover's toolbox thread the toolbox and the design generator are a bit clunky. I think these features can be improved by unifying how they work and are managed.

Adding drag and drop or double click to start the insertion in both the toolbox and the design generator would help speedup the workflow. This is minor but It would be nice to have uniform treeviews and panel controls that scale with the rest of the UI (the design tree scale) and a UI dark theme for all controls.

 

[bigseb]

In my experience AD struggles importing step/3dm files with lots of radii, particularly toroidial shapes. Only thing is to try importing them separately.

 

[stepalibre]

Facet Resolution? Why would facet resolution need to be changed to fix a simple torus?

 

[stepalibre]

I made a Rhino file with 3D primitives and many basic shapes don't import at all. No ellipsoids cylinders, or boxes? I tried different import settings.
Rhino File:

Alibre:

 

[stepalibre]

If someone could try to import the file and let me know if it works or not, that would be greatly appreciated.

I'll keep this thread for Rhino 3DM issues and make a thread for "Multibody part workflow for a 3D configurator" sometime next year.

 

[stepalibre]

The toolbox and design generator are awesome and easy to get up and running.
If the toolbox could be accessed from Part Booleans you could build a library of things to boolean in your part.

 

[stepalibre]

New year, new priorities. I'll export/save both 3DM and STEP files, using one as a fallback.
Rhino type "closed solid polysurface" appear to provide better results. This may be due to Rhino entities not converting nicely to ACIS entities.

Supported types:
Surfaces - Closed and open
Polysurfaces - Closed and open
Trimmed and untrimmed surfaces

Failing/unsupported types:
Light-weight extrusion objects - closed extrusion, box, tube, cylinder, ...
Solids - sphere, torus, ellipsoid, ...

Rhinoceros Help

docs.mcneel.com

Essentially, convert unsupported types to a supported one to avoid problems.