My first experiment with drawing in Rhino will the laser in mind as tool, was a turning a series of drawings tracing everyday actions such as cooking porridge, school run, and talking on the phone into 3D objects using the modelling software Rhinoceros. As a part of my research which explore what kinds of actions and processes in everyday life are data producing, and in turn, what movements we engage with producing such data – I was curious to explore turning these visual explorations into 3D objects. I used the skills I learned attending the Rhinoceros level 1 run by Simply Rhino in Bethnal Green, which was scheduled over 7 weeks, one night a week, 3 hours + homework. In the seven weeks we went through the basic platform setting, and every week we practised a couple of modelling tools, and by the 7th week we had been through a quite thick book with exercises and tutorials.
Learning the program was for me mostly about developing an understand of what you can use the software for, and as a newcomer to the field, I it was definitively through doing lots of exercises, that I began to understand what kind of working processes the software environment enabled. My first exercise to realise using the laser cutter was a trace of the path in the kitchen I take to make porridge every morning. I drew it in Rhino using a point-controlled curve using a minimal amount of control points to get straight lines between the main points in the kitchen implicated in porridge cooking which included the fridge (milk), shelf (oats), cooker (cooking), table (eating), sink (dishes), and the cupboard (bowl and spoon).
I then annotated the drawing with the points but assigned the annotation on another level separate from the one I want to use for printing. I then used the solid function to turn the curve into a solid 3D object with surfaces. This simple drawing what I wanted to turn into a small sculpture which I could make using the laser scanner. In my next post I will talk about how I prepared the 3D drawing for the laser.
