From the course: Learning Rhino 6 for Mac

Start window - Rhino Tutorial

From the course: Learning Rhino 6 for Mac

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Start window

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- [Narrator] When Rhino first launches, I'll see this start window. So this gives me options for opening new and existing Rhino files. On the right hand side, I'll see this column labeled recent models. And this gives me a list of different 3DM files that I've used recently in Rhinoceros, and .3dm, that's the native rhino file extension. So with my mouse, I can just use the scroll bar here and click on different recent files that I might like to open. I can also use the up and down arrows on the keyboard to jump up or down to different files, or if I know a file by name, I can use the keyboard to type in that file name. So for example, if I wanted to open this developable start 3DM, I could just type on the keyboard D-E-V, and it will jump right to that file on the list. And that can be really useful once you get a longer list of recent files to just jump right to the one that you want. Once I've selected the recent Rhino file, I'd like to open, I can either double click with the mouse or hit return on the keyboard, and that opens up that file in Rhino. Now, on the other hand, if I wanted to start a blank file, I click down here on the templates tab. I notice when I do that, my recent models column changes to this standard templates column. And these templates are blank Rhino files with preset units and preset absolute tolerances. And if I go down the list here, I'll see things like large objects-millimeters, small object-centimeters, small objects-feet, small objects-inches, and so forth. So, different units and different scales together in a template. And hopefully the units here should be pretty intuitive. And those should also correspond to the scale that you're modeling. So, let's say I was planning to model something large, like a skyscraper, I'd probably use units like meters or feet. On the other hand, if I was modeling something smaller, like a piece of jewelry, I probably used the unit like a millimeter. Now absolute tolerance is a little bit less intuitive, but basically this is how precise we want Rhino to be in modeling operations, where it has to approximate things. And we can start to get some clues for which templates and which absolute tolerances are right for the job, just by hovering over any one of these template files. So let's take a look at this large objects, millimeter template, for example. So I'm just hovering over that with my mouse. And you can see, I get a little dialogue, and this gives me some clues about when to use this template. Rhino is telling me to use this for making objects the size of a truck or larger, and for objects which don't need to be built to manufacturing tolerances. And I can see my absolute tolerances in this template is 0.01 millimeters. So let's compare that to these small objects millimeters standard template. So again, just mouse over that one and here Rhino saying, use this template file for objects the size of a truck or smaller, and for objects which must be built to manufacturing tolerances. So I can see here that my absolute tolerance for this template is 0.001 millimeters. So that's a tighter tolerance than the large objects template. Now you might be tempted to think that more precision is always better, but actually a more precise absolute tolerance can sometimes unnecessarily add to the file size. It can also add to the calculation time that rhino needs to do different modeling operations, and it can actually end up just adding extraneous information to your file that isn't actually useful in the end. So picking the right tolerance definitely comes with experience, and it depends on different factors that'll go into your modeling workflow. We'll cover those more in depth in later videos, but for now just think of absolute tolerance as the point where the measurements of your model will be close enough. So I could open any of these standard template files just by selecting them, and then either double clicking or hitting return on the keyboard. And if I have a template file that I use frequently, in our case for the exercise files for this course, I'll tend to use the small objects centimeters standard template. And I can set that to the default just by clicking on it, and then clicking the make default template button. Once I've done that, I can see that it's labeled as the default template. And now anytime I go click this new model button down in the lower left, that default template will be used, regardless of whether I'm in the standard templates column or not. I could also make my own custom templates with my own specific units and specific tolerances. We'll talk about that more later, but for now the standard ones should work just fine. Then lastly, an option here in the start window is that I can open an existing file that I haven't used recently just by clicking this open other button. Okay, so now that we've had a chance to work through the start window, you should be able to use it to open recent files, specify units and tolerances, and work with template files.

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