Rounded Rectangular Button

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Fertenbaugh on August 24, 2010 at 10:32pm

Hands down, I'd use Tsplines for this. You won't have any seem in the render if you do. It will only take a minute to build as well.

Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Fertenbaugh on August 24, 2010 at 11:02pm

Here's what I'm talking about. Took 2 min in Tsplines.

Attachments:

• Square Button.jpg, 103 KB

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Permalink Reply by Brent Zartman on August 25, 2010 at 8:13am

WOW!!! thats a beautiful result. thank you for the suggestion. I was under a bind on this one, so I ended up posting the question directly to McNeel. The wonderful Pascal Golay responded by suggesting using multiple derivative curves and a point...(scaled, smoothed and height nudged) and then using loft with the loose option. the result was acceptable. Although, not a 2 minute job. I am still debating about getting Tsplines. lol, seems to be the "all-size" wrench of modelling complex surfaces.

Thank you again,

Brent

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Fertenbaugh on August 25, 2010 at 9:57am

Brent, I completely agree. You can do it in Rhino using Nurb surfaces, but the process to get there can be frustrating. That's why I turned to Tsplines, it makes all of that kind of thing simple. I'm getting older now and don't like hitting my head against the wall so much like when I was younger. For the price of the software, it's really a no brainer.

Kevin :)

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Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on August 27, 2010 at 4:35pm

Hi Brent- as discussed on Rhino tech support, this is best handled in pure Rhino with a 'loose' loft. I'll post the example file again here in case others might find it of use. T-Splines is also an excellent and powerful tool for this type of shape.

-Pascal

Attachments:

• SimpleRoundyButton.3dm, 253 KB

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Permalink Reply by Dan Anderson on August 31, 2010 at 6:44am

This can be done easily in rhino with a rail revolve.
You need to define a profile (freehand spline on your own, or using my method below) and a rail.

Quick method:
Open Pascal's model.
grab the profile from his "loft,loose" form. ( curve from object> duplicate edge)
move this so the interior end is at the center of one of the rounded rectangles.
Use the "rail revolve" function to create the shape. Extrude bottom edge to desired button thickness.

I've appended Pascal's model to show this process.

-dan

Attachments:

• SimpleRoundyButton - using rail revolve.3dm, 1.6 MB

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Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on August 31, 2010 at 7:28am

Yep, this can work and it's quick and easy however the results are not as good as a loft- the problem in this type of shape is getting rid of the concentration of the shape that the corners cause. RailRevolve does not do anything to dissipate the corner out into the softer part of the shape- in a relatively flat shape, you can get away with it if you do not look too closely but a more puffy one will show a strong X shape from the corners. Even in a Loft it is sometimes worth the trouble to add another curve help get rid of the 'X'. An interesting thing to note is that if you have a clean non-rational degree 3 profile curve for the button, like the one rail-revolved, and you place a loft curve at every profile curve control point, the loose loft will match the profile curve shape exactly.
-Pascal

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