Pumpkin Stem Tutorial for Rhino

Created by Gordon Patterson

Instructor Hudson’s Bay High School

June, 2005

Rhino Skills: Circle, line ,curve, join, hide or change layer and turn layers off, loft or sweep one rail.

1.   Start a new file, go with default setting.   Save as Pumpkin stem etc.

If you want to choose a different setting, type units and hit enter, the dialog box will open.   The Default setting for Model units is Millimeters. This can be changed to other metric units or SI units like inches, feet etc.

If you change to inches it is recommended that you also change Absolute tolerance to .001.  

2. In the Top view port, draw a “Circle” with a radius of about 3 millimeters.   Note that the circle center is located at intersection of the X and Y axis. To do this toggle snap and draw a circle with a radius starting at the (0 ,0)

3.   Select line, toggle end and near on Osnap. Draw a spiked shape around the circle like the example below.

4.Join all the straight lines together.   Hide the circle, us a crossing window select all the lines and select join.   Check to see if they all light up when you select a line.

5.   Draw a curve from the center of your circle or star in the front view going up, but twisting

6.   Turn on control points.   With Ortho on pull the points in the top view to make a gentle “S” shape.   Pumpkin stems twist a bit.

7.   Array the star shape along the curve.

Go to the Transform menu drop down to Array and over to Along Curve.

Select the star shape first.

Select the curve that you twisted next a dialog box should pop up.   Change the Number of items to 6 or 6.

Under Style select Roadlike, then select OK.  

You will be directed to select a view port to choose a CPlane ,   select Perspective view port

8.   Results should look like the example below.

9.   Scale each star shape decrease each scale by .1 from the last one. Ex scale the second star .9, the third .8 the fourth .7 etc.

Note select Osnap and set center only.   You want to scale from the center of each star.

10.   Loft

Use a crossing window, select from the right to the left and type or select loft.

An easyer way to do it might be to use the command sweep one rail. Go to the surface menu and move down to the sweep one rail command. Next select each shape sequencily as you move up the line or stem at ajust curve seams select a window keep the arrows going the same direction and hit enter.

At adjust curve seams hit enter.

11.   Cap Planner Holes

Go up to the solid menu, pull down the Cap Planer Holes.

Select the surface of the stem.

12.  Add materials to the stem.   Render

13.   Copy it to the pumpkin file

14.   Move and scale it to look natural.

.