Surface Tools are utilities that allow you to do quick construction and editing on surfaces (without thickness). Below we highlight some of the most interesting ones.
01 _AdjustSeam
Often you have to work with surfaces that are closed on one direction, folding back on themselves, like a tube. These surfaces have a “junction edge” or, better, a “seam”, that highlights where the junction line is, or where the initial and final edge meet. Sometimes the location of the seam must be changed and moved elsewhere to allow you to perform other tasks (trim, fillets etc.) at that same point. You can do this using the _AdjustSeam and move the seam in a different portion of the surface.
02 _ExtendSrf
The _ExtendSrf allows you to “lengthen” a surface on a specific edge.
If the surface to extend it’s a trimmed surface, before completing the extension, Rhino displays a preview of the elongation.
03 _ConnectSrf
The _ConnectSrf is used to lengthen two surfaces, extending them over their own natural direction. Depending on the selected edge, the command extends the surfaces and, once it find the connection point, it cut both along the all width.
04 _RemoveEdge
The _RemoveEdge allows you to delete trimmed edges of a surface and it try to extend the surface to complete the shape.
The command works in two different modes, Replace with line which completes the surface creating a new straight edge , and Extend Edges Side that creates new edges extending existing ones till the intersection.
05 _Untrim
A quick surfaces editing is essential and to do this is often necessary to remove holes and cuts. This is possible through the _Untrim tool that give you the ability of restoring the surface like it was originally built.
06 _UntrimAll
Besides untrim there’s also _UntrimAll . This command remove, in a single operation, all the holes and cuts on multiple surfaces, restoring the entire surfaces to it’s original state and without having to select edges or holes one by one.
07 _Simmetry
When you have a symmetrical geometry is more effective to build just one half of the shape. Using the _Simmetry tool, like a mirror tools, you can create the other half of curves or surfaces but keeping the tangency over the reflection plane.
Enabling the history you will be able, by changing the initial geometry, to get the copy following, symmetrical, all the updates.
08 _MatchSrf
The _MatchSrf is one of the most interesting, and powerful, surface tool. It actually allows you to edit and manage the connection between edges of one surface and the adjacent edges by adjusting the continuity (G0, G1, G2), in order to obtain a perfectly smooth transition between different surface.
09 _BlendSrf
_BlendSrf is a tool for building complex and smooth shape able to create a new surface filling the gap between edges of, at least, two existing surfaces.
Other than this it allow you, also, to tweak the continuity (G0, G1, G2) during the creation process.
10 _OffsetSrf
The _OffsetSrf allows you to create an outside or inside copy of the selected surface with a constant distance. Enabling the option SOLID=YES, you can create a thick geometry giving depth to a surfaces or polysurfaces.
