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Cutting a model with a plane

JordanT

New member
Okay, I'm a new user, and I'm not sure how to phrase the question to get a good search...so here's the long version:

I have an object in Rhino that was created by someone else. If you can imagine a sheet of metal which has been kinked - almost fan-folded - and not-quite straightened. This has left a "wrinkled" surface, oriented mostly vertically (like the side of a building).

I'd like to (I need to) intersect a horizontal plane with this (vertical) surface and export or otherwise dimension the resulting line. Is there an easy way to do this? If so, what commands should I be researching to accomplish this?

Thanks for any insight!

Jordan
 
CutPlane is the first tool you'll want.
Select the object(s) you plan to cut and type the command CutPlane.
You'll want to do that in an orthographic view (perspective is default to Top view if you draw there). See the help file video if you still don't understand it after creating it.
If you need the plane at some angle, you'd have to either create a new cplane or just create your own plane (which is what i'd do in that case).

OK, once you have your plane just either use the split command or the trim command. Sometimes one works better than another. Split is faster if you have a bunch of non-joined parts you want to split. Trim is faster if you just need to scrap a section of one or two parts.

DupEdge to select the resulting edge. Then just get the length of that (this works even if there are multiple curves, so if your surface had thickness you'll need to remove half those curves if you wanted just the length of the surface. Delete the end curves there that would define the surface thickness, then delete one side (whichever you'd consider the B-side).

hope that helps.
 
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