All tools

Rhino tools

Commands for Rhino 8 that take your model straight into Flow Studio: views, street-level cameras and the real site around your design. Each run shows its cost before it starts; drafts are free.

FlowStudio Live

Sends the Rhino view you're looking at – and a plan cut through it – to a Flow Studio tool: interior views, an exterior view, an axonometric or a rendered plan. You pick the look, light and notes in a small window, see the price, and the pictures come back to a folder next to your .3dm.

Photomontage is in the same command: line your model up with your own site photo and the AI puts the design into it. A Google Maps button shows Street View from the Rhino camera, so you know where to stand to take the photo.

How to call itFlowStudio

Set the view up, type the command, choose the tool.

FlowStudioViews Live

Finds the views worth showing, from the model itself. Bird's-eye: the building from the eight compass points, raised only as far as the buildings in front make it. Street level: eye-height cameras on the real streets round the site, in two-point perspective, each with a "Where to stand" Street View link. Saved views: your own named views, exactly as saved.

Each view is scored and shown as a small picture; the best are ticked. Export them as they are (free, no AI), or send them for renders – with the neighbours drawn by the AI or kept as white massing.

How to call itFlowStudioViews

Select the building first (or press Enter for your saved views only).

FlowStudioContext Live

Brings in the site around your design, free: buildings raised to their heights, roads, paths, railways, green spaces and water from OpenStreetMap, on layers of their own. In England it adds the real ground and measured roof heights from the Environment Agency's LiDAR survey, with bridges and viaducts on their decks.

It lines itself up with your model: click one corner on the map and the same corner in your model, or – if you already have a 3D context – let it fit to your buildings by itself (FitToMyContext). Credit: © OpenStreetMap contributors; LiDAR © Environment Agency (Open Government Licence).

How to call itFlowStudioContext

Click the site, give a postcode or latitude, longitude, and the radius.

Photomontage to… New

A Flow Studio tool for the photomontages you make from Rhino: turn one into an illustration, clean it up, or show it in other light and weather – bright, overcast, golden hour, dusk or night – while keeping the photo's detail.

How to call it

In Flow Studio, open the tool Photomontage to… and drop your photomontage in.

Grasshopper components In the workshop

The same sending from a Grasshopper definition: a list of cameras and design options in, one picture each out – for comparing options side by side.

How to call it

A Flow Studio tab in Grasshopper: FS Tool, FS Views, FS Camera, FS Send.

Setting up

  1. In Rhino 8 type RunPythonScript and choose flow_studio.py – once. It adds the commands above as aliases.
  2. From then on just type the command's name. The pictures are saved in a folder next to your .3dm.

You'll need a Flow Studio account; the Rhino files come with it.

Want the Rhino tools?

Write to us and we'll send the files and set you up.

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