Skip to content

One competition board, many Rhino views, and they all need the same hand

A competition board lives or dies on looking like one piece of work. Drawing six views by hand in the same style takes days; rendering them gives six images that do not read as a set. This redraws each Rhino viewport as a presentation sketch with a fixed drawing brief — fineliner, loose watercolour, painted foliage — so every view on the board comes out in the same hand.

Try it freeDownload the Rhino & Grasshopper plugin

Rhino 6, 7, or 8

A hand-drawn ink-and-watercolour sketch of an office atrium, annotated in red

How the Rhino & Grasshopper plugin handles it

  1. Use one display mode for every view

    Pick one display mode and use it for all the viewports you will send. The drawing is built from what each capture shows, so mixed modes give mixed line weight across the board.

  2. Capture each viewport in turn

    Make each viewport active and click the VotexArch button, choosing Sketch & Presentation. Name the files by view so the set stays in order.

  3. Run them with the same additions

    The drawing brief is built in. If you add a season or mood, add the same one to every view — that is what keeps the set reading as one.

What Rhino & Grasshopper hands over

Rhino’s capture is a real render of each viewport, so line quality comes from the display mode rather than from a screenshot. Parallel and perspective viewports both work, which suits a board mixing axonometrics with eye-level views; the sketch keeps each view’s projection as captured.

The thing that goes wrong

Dense Grasshopper output — fine panelling, many small members — tends to become a thicket of lines once redrawn. For a sketch, simplify the preview or bake a lighter version; the drawing reads structure, not every element the definition produces.

Do you preserve geometry?

Yes. Every render pass is constrained to your source geometry and camera position, so walls, proportions, and perspective stay locked instead of being reimagined by the model.

Models available for this

Every model draws from the same credit balance, and a credit is only spent on a successful generation.

  • Presentation Sketch10 cr / image
  • Presentation Sketch Pro14 cr / image

Questions

Will every view come out in exactly the same style?
The drawing brief is the same for every run, which is what makes a set hang together. Results are not identical in every stroke — they are drawn, after all — so run a view again if one sits apart from the rest.
Can I send an axonometric viewport?
Yes. The capture keeps the projection of the viewport it came from, and the sketch redraws that image rather than rebuilding the view. Check the first result against the view before committing a whole board to it.

Related workflows