Rhino - Marine Baseline Technology

Hi,

I purchased RhinOffsets from Baseline Technology and am having problems getting it running. I have installed it as given in the readme and the loaded the plugin normally. Everything seemed ok until I tried using the buttons on the toolbar. I simply get nothing at all when clicking on them. No dialog of any kind and no reaction. Just does not seem to work at all. I have tried with the samples and with my own models but there is nothing from the buttons at all. Also re-installed a few times but again the buttons dont seem to work. I am using Rhino 4.0 SR8. There are no other problems at all and everything else is fine.

Has anyone had any problems with the product, or know what I am doing wrong. Would appreciate any help. Many thanks.

Regards,
John

 

Hi John:

To start the ball rolling, hover over any of the buttons and press the shift key
while still holding down the shift key, right click on the button
The Edit Toolbar Button dialog will pop up.
At the bottom is a pane labeled "Left mouse button command".
Highlight and copy the contents to the clipboard
paste them into your response to this message.

Let's see where that leads us. I may just need to supply you with a new toolbar file.

Cliff W Estes
BaseLine Technology

 

Hi Cliff,

Thank you for your reply and help. I used the Blue Station Button for your request. The result is as follows:

The entry is - _RhinOffsets_CreateStationPoints

I have only opened Rhino and there is no model open.

Regards,
John

 

There seems to be a problem in the installer.

Try this:

Open the options window (tools > options)

click plug-ins (just above modeling aids under Rhino options)
In the right pane, click the "Install button"
Next, browse to the folder where you installed RhinOffsets and, in the scripts folder, select the file "RhinOffsets.rhp".

That should make everything work properly. I'm not sure why you are getting nothing on the command line. You should at least see the text you forwarded to me along with the "no such command" error.

Let me know how this goes.

 

Hi Cliff,

It does apear now to be working. I dont know yet how to set everything up to obtain a set of offsets so I will spend a few days learning how and let you know if everything goes ok. Many thanks for your help. It is much appreciated.

Regards,
John

 

No worries. It's all in the Readme.htm that ships with the plugin.

You'll quickly find that the plugin pays for itself after the first offset table. The primary thing is to remember that offsets for curves can't double back on themselves, like buttocks in the bulb area.

One other word of caution: Make sure all your curves have names.

Best of luck.

 

Ok Cliff, and again many thanks.

 

Hi All,

Just to keep you all up to date I have had another problem with Rhino Offsets. The problem is that while trying to create Stations and enter the value for the number of stations required I get the following error message:

Source: Microsoft VBScript runtime error
Error: Type mismatch: ‘NoStr’
Line: 57
Char: 2

I sent an email to Cliff at Baseline Technology describing the problem and gave him a screen print of the error. His reply was as follows:

‘This is a problem I had fixed, but it keeps cropping up, so I guess I just thought I had it fixed. I’m going to guess that you have stations and half stations. The essence of the problem is that on this side of the pond, we use a dot for a decimal separator, where you use a comma. The workaround is to change your system to recognize a dot as a decimal separator. The more permanent fix is I’ll have to have another go at the code to recognize the comma. I hope this helps.’

I tried the suggestion that Cliff gave but unfortunately it did not work. I have emailed Cliff again explaining that actually we use a DOT also for the decimal separator, and this is how my system is configured. In saying that I did change the system so that a COMMA was used instead of the DOT and then tried again to see if it did fix the problem. Unfortunately I got the same thing and the same error. Nothing changed. I changed the system back again and again have the same error.

I have asked Cliff to let me know when he will be able to fix the problem and am waiting for a response. Hope it will be soon. As soon as I know I will let you know. If anyone else has any suggestions I would be grateful. At the moment I am stuck.

Regards,
John

 

John, can you share the model along with a listing of the station labels that you would like to supply?

 

Send by private email.

 

Hi All,

I have sent the following to Cliff at Baseline and hope it’s helpful.

I think I may have solved at least part of the problem. Up until today I have been learning Rhino Offsets on the models sent as samples with the Plug-in. I have two copies of the plug-in. One is a demo version I downloaded before purchasing the product, and the other sent by Cliff after purchasing it. I started using these recently while learning how to use the plug-in.

Yesterday morning I decided to try to produce the offsets on my own model, which I produced while doing the tutorials. I wanted to check that I was getting the same error on both the sample model and my own. Initially this was the case and I received the same error on both models while running the first copy of Rhino Offsets and could not produce stations on either.

I then decided to uninstall this copy of Rhino Offsets and install the second copy. On this copy I found that after creating the waterlines, buttocks, and diagonals as before I had a different result with the stations. If I simply tried as before by pressing the ‘S’ button I got the same error. However, if before pressing the ‘S’ button I pressed the YELLOW button to produce a table of offsets and then clicking OK to the message telling me that I needed to create stations first I was then able to press the ‘S’ button and actually was able to create the stations.

Just to explain again. By pressing the YELLOW button first, then acknowledging the error message I was able to immediately press the ‘S’ button and create the stations. Before this action I could not create them and received the same error every time I tried.

However, when I attempted to create the table of offsets I found that the copy installed was a demo version. Thinking that all I needed to do was to re-install the other copy this was what I did. I then did the same thing again to create the stations and this worked ok on this copy also, but on trying to produce the table I found that this was also a demo version and not a full version as I had expected.

Obviously by pressing the YELLOW button first something is modified in the code, which then allows me to create the stations. I hope this makes sense and I have explained it ok.

In any event I have a DEMO version and not a full version and I hope that Cliff will rectify this.

I have sent both of the models that I have used to Cliff, although as I have said one is actually a sample model. I have also sent both copies of the plug-in I used. Hope this will help in finding the problem. I am not sure if this work around will help others but its here if you need it and it’s of use to you. Will keep you posted.

Regards,
John

 

Hi All,

As a further update on this problem I received an email from Cliff yesterday, which reads as follows:

‘Hi John: I’ve tracked the problem down and fixed it, but I’m not confident that the solution will “take”, without cleaning some entries from the registry. Attached is the new plugin. Copy it to the RhinOffsets/scripts folder to replace the existing file and give it a try. On my system, it did not work until I swept the registry for all entries of “RhinOffsets” and deleted them, but I don’t recommend that for the average user, so I will write some code to accomplish the task.

In the meantime, when creating the station points, it will be necessary to click the yellow button and cancel in order for the function “noStr” to be declared. Then the “S” button will work fine, as you discovered. Regards, Cliff’

I tried with the RHP file that Cliff sent and it worked as others did previously and produces the sections after pressing the yellow button. However, when I try to produce the table of offsets it came back telling me that it would only produce the table when used on the models sent with the plug-in. I assume that this means that this RHP file is also a demo version and not a full version. I have asked Cliff to send me the full version file. Will keep you posted.

Regards,
John

 

Hi All,

Just to keep you up to date with this problem. Cliff today sent a new version of the RoAx.dll to replace the existing RoAx.dll in the Rhinoffsets4 folder. I replaced the DLL as requested by Cliff and then ran Rhinoffsets again on my own model and everything worked fine. I am now able to produce offsets as required and have them printed to the DXF file. Many thanks to Cliff for the help and fixes.

One problem that remains at the moment is that the plug-in does not accept the names entered for the buttocks and instead uses the names it offers. In other words it asks for a name and gives an example, and then ignores the name you enter and uses the example anyway. Not a big problem and I am sure that by the time you read this Cliff will have already fixed it.

Another problem is the station positions. Most remain in decimal inches regardless of the conversion, while those requested in Feet-Inches-Fractions are not all correct and the last station position does not match the length of the hull. I hope Cliff will fix these things soon.

The plug-in produces a really nice set of offsets and I have attached a couple of images to show the set-up and results for one run that I did. I don’t know if it’s of any help to any of you but I have also included an attached zip file, which contains more example runs and includes the model that I used for my tests. The model is not a perfect hull but its ok for testing the plug-in.

All-in-all a nice little plug-in that does a very nice job. Will keep you posted.

Regards,
John