Rhino: Kitchen Renovation Project with Rhino

[Mary Fugier]

Here is a kitchen renovation project that uses Rhino to develop and communicate the design options to the client. After nearly eleven interactions, the design, colors and materials were decided upon.

The project was due to begin and late October 2019 and be finished by the first week in December. In-stock cabinets from Home Depot were used to keep the project on budget and schedule.

I, along with Bob Koll and Pete Sorenson believe this could be a great project for high school students. 

Project: Have students re-design their kitchen or their grandmother's kitchen. Include a site visit to measure up the space and prepare an as-built of the room.

The Scope: Have students talk with the parent/grandparent/relative and determine any changes to the flow of the space, layout of appliances, possible new appliance, color and materials as well as budget. Set up time limitations and other constraints like ADA requirements to make the project more realistic.

1. Have student and "client" start a Pinterest or Houzz album with ideas for colors and materials.
2. Draw the floor plan and layout the cabinets in 2D first, before replacing the 2D plan with 3D geometry. Extrude the walls and apply good layer organization.
   VisualARQ can be very helpful for creating the walls, windows, door, roof, stair, railing for the space. 
3. Using the Home Depot's online catalog, models the various wall cabinets, base cabinets, bridge cabinets or any specialty cabinets to be used. There are 360 videos of all the cabinet to help with the dimension and modeling.
   
4. Picking out the cabinets may start as a upgrade or in-kind replacement. It can be like lego project, fitting in new pieces. Encourage the students to think about other features like an work island or pantry. Home Depot includes idea videos with all the cabinet pieces. 
5. Use sites like GoogleWareHouse, 3DCafe, TurboSquid, or other free web sites,  to obtain manufacture models.
6. When the 3D model is complete, assign materials and generate renderings for the elevations. In Rhino 6, you can use the Render display mode and ViewCaptureToFile in place the rendering to an image file. 
   
7. Be prepared to work though many variations on color and design until the client finds what they were looking for. The renderings will provide the client with the visualization that will help ensure that when the project is complete, they have what they wanted. This is one of the first designs we had for this kitchen reno: the cape cod-style kitchen transitioned to a tuscan-style kitchen with input from the client.
   
   
8. Dimension the floor plan in the Top view.
9. Generate elevations with the Make2D command. Add dimension to the 2D elevations. (Or use VisualARQ to generate plans, section and elevations from the 3D model.)
   
10. Next use Layout to set up sheets for the 2D drawing set. The to include plan, elevation, dimensions and materials callout, rendering that were ViewCapturedToFile. 
    
11. Create cabinet install plan and schedule of cabinets with all pieces numbered. Numbers are invaluable when the cabinets are delivered and organized for installation.
    Tip: Table was created in EXCEL, printed to PDF, and imported in to Rhino 6, The text and lines were imported from the PDF. With minimal clean up the table is added to the Rhino model.
12. Use the model to calculate the areas for the flooring, backsplash tile, counter tops and accent tile. To understand how the backsplash tile is installed see this video from Lowes: 
    
    

Here is how our project compares to the Rhino design and renders:

The North West Corner

Rhino

Photo of Completed Project

Looking West

Rhino

Photo of Completed Project

The South West Corner

Rhino

Photo of Completed Project

Finally, have the students make boards and present each for their designs to the class. Explain why they made certain decisions. Share boards at a open house and vote on the best project. If there were any projects that were funded and completed, share that here as well.

Let me know if you find any of this useful.

Thanks, 

Mary Ann Fugier

[Bob Koll]

Fantastic.

bk