Fabrication

Tips for displaying holograms for fabrication

Visualizing models for fabrication

The default shaders and rhino materials can be substitute for visualization techniques better suited for fabrication.

Part Assembly - Unique Parts

1. Use colour (diffuse materials or vertex colours) to differentiate between different parts in the assembly

2. Use colour to focus on the current part to be assembled

3. Consider using transparency when attempting to overlay digital and physical objects.

Part Assembly - Repeating Parts (e.g. brick stacking)

1. Use wireframes to represent the 'cage' of each part

2. Use transparency and colour to differentiate current part / course / chunk from previous chunks

3. Consider using 2D representation e.g. contour or section cuts of parts where possible.

3D Fabrication

1. When using holograms as guides for fabrication (e.g. determining how much to bend a part, or how long to make a cut), use transparency to help avoid problems with holograms occluding physical material.

Working with Curves

Fologram synchronizes your Rhino document with the HoloLens in order to live stream changes in your model as you make them. When modelling with NURBs geometry, Fologram will stream Rhino's default render mesh. This can cause problems when working with pipes and complex surfaces that generate very detailed meshes for rendering to the screen. This detail is not necessary for mixed reality experiences and can cause performance issues on the HoloLens. Instead, use the following:

1. Rhino Mesh Piping (ApplyCurvePiping, ExtractPipedCurve in Rhino5 or using the Curve piping property https://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/6/help/en-us/properties/curvepiping.htm in Rhino 6 together with ExtractPipedCurve command to generate meshes)
2. Grasshopper Mesh Piping using the Fologram Mesh Pipe component.

As a general rule, try to minimize the number of polygons in your mesh pipe while maintaining acceptable levels of detail.