2.4. NURBS Surfaces

Basic introduction to NURBS Surfaces in Rhino

Geometry in Rhino can be clasified in Points, Curves, Surfaces, Solids and Primitives. In this chapter we will focus on surfaces, solids and primitives.

Geometry

Nurbs Surfaces

NURBS > Non-Uniform Rational Basis Spline

Surfaces are bounded by curves called Edges. Surfaces have an area, their shape can be changed by moving control points, and they can be meshed.

Surfaces

Solids

Solids are closed surfaces or polysurfaces that enclose a volume.

Some of the solid primitives are closed single-surfaces, others are polysurfaces.

Polysurface objects are deformable by using the deformation commands.

You can also extract surfaces and deform the surfaces with control Point Editing.

Solid modelling

Surface Control Points

Srf Control points

Edit points

You can use Point Editing on Curves, Surfaces and Meshes, but not on polysurfaces or solids.

Rhino internally represent Curves as NURBS.

Knots

Part of the information needed to define a NURBS curves is a list of numbers called Knot Vector and the values of the numbers in this list are called Knots.

(More info: http://docs.mcneel.com/)

Mesh Surfaces

Work in progress…

Knowledge Checks