Product Information

1.   Text: Introduction in the periphery of Rhinoceros

rhinoreverse brings your digitised prototypes into Rhino. It reads large point meshes coming from any measurement devise and converts them into NURBS faces. The goal is enable working all design and manufacturing procedures of Rhino based on NURBS data. rhinoreverse runs inside Rhino and has the same hardware requirements. Rhino with rhinoreverse runs on ordinary Windows desktop and laptop computers. rhinoreverse 2 works with Rhino 4, rhinoreverse 1 works with Rhino 3.

2.   Text: General product information

(also published on the webside www.rhinoreverse.icapp.ch)

rhinoreverse™ is an integrated plug-in for the 3D NURBS modeler, Rhinoceros©. rhinoreverse helps create NURBS surfaces from mesh data. 

Start by sketching curves on the mesh. Then rhinoreverse will automatically fit NURBS surfaces to mesh. rhinoreverse has the unique ability to represent large complex shapes with just a few NURBS surfaces by creating surfaces with 2, 3, 4 or more edges.

rhinoreverse also improves Rhino's ability to:

• Import and display large meshes. (up to 1 million and more polygons)
• Quick draw and edit surface boundaries on the mesh
• Control continuity and tolerance between the NURBS faces
• Powerful healing of NURBS models by adjusting faces and face boundaries
• Fill holes in NURBS models within the given tolerances

This leads to a very simple and intuitive handling of complex mesh models in Rhino.

3.   Text: Detailed product information

(also published on the webside www.rhinoreverse.icapp.ch)

rhinoreverse™ 2 enables the user to transform digitised surfaces (point meshs) to spline faces. The goal is to prepare further design steps of the CAx-process-chain like solid modelling and NC-programming.

Additional "healing" algorithm.

Already existing NURBS-face models can be improved: Small gaps, steps and overlaps will be filled automatically. The goal is to improve data quality in order to enable solid-modelling and NC-milling.

Ease of use
Arbitrary faces can be defined, to represent design intentions like feature lines very smoothly. The user only has to sketch a grid, containing boundary curves for all new faces (Figure 1 to 3). In addition with some keyboard commands and display methods the use of rhinoreverse 2 is very easy.


1 STL-data
2 Sketched boundary curves
3 Resulting NURBS faces

Innovative new algorithms to calculate and handle trimmed faces bring exceptional advantages
Compared to rhinoreverse 1 the new version 2 generates trimmed faces. This procedure enables the user to define arbitrary faces by up to 25 boundary curves. Figure 4 shows such a typical trimmed face, highlighted in yellow, with more than 4 boundary curves. Decoupling the approximation routine from the sketched boundary curves improves the shape quality a lot. The shape of the faces is now only dependent from the shape of the given point mesh. The use of trimmed faces also reduces the manual effort at around 50% (compared to rhinoreverse 1): Less curves have to be sketched.

4 Sketched boundary curves
5 Before boolean operation
6 After boolean operation

High face quality of the calculated multi-face model enables solid modelling
If the option "Healing" is used, the transitions between calculated faces will be adjusted to Rhino´s current tolerance settings. This ensures, that the resulting face model can be used afterwards for solid operations or NC programming without any rework (Figure 5 and 6).

Fast skinning method
The additional option to rapidly create simplified faces (which was available in rhinoreverse 1, too), has been revised and improved. The goal is to represent point meshes "quick and dirty" with a small number of faces.

8 Sketched boundary curves
9 Resulting NURBS faces


Feature Overview

• Several import interfaces for mesh data (*.stl, *.wrl, *.vrml, *.af, *.nas, *.txt)
• Simple sketching of boundary curves on the given mesh data by using the mouse
• Flexible definition of the faces by 2 to 25 boundary curves (former: 4 curves define one face)
• Optional mode, to skin the point mesh "quick and dirty" with a low number of faces
• Flexible use of arbitrary T-joins for local refinements
• Use of several shortcuts to modify and enlarge the curve grid by mouse and keyboard
• Use of only one file (*.3dm) for saving all data
• Automatic calculation of topology by using graph algorithms
• Automatic approximation of the start faces to the point mesh
• Robustness against small holes and sharp edges in the mesh
• Automatic recalculation of face transitions to Rhino´s tolerance settings
• Robustness against gaps in the point mesh
• Additional "healing"-function, to improve quality of already existing face models: Automatic elimination of small gaps, steps and overlaps