Ortho2D›3DM → 2D drawing
Rhino 3DM to 2D drawings, without wrestling Make2D
Make2D gives you curves. It does not give you a dimensioned sheet, it slows to a crawl on dense geometry, and the result usually needs a cleanup pass before anybody can issue it. Ortho2D reads the .3dm directly in the browser and produces the finished drawing: aligned views, automatic dimensions, sections, and a title block.
✓ No installation✓ Your model stays in your browser✓ Free to build — $3 to download
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Watch it run — model in, dimensioned sheet out.
What Make2D leaves you to do
Run it, wait, get a pile of curves in the Top view, move them somewhere sensible, delete the duplicates, add every dimension by hand, build a layout with a title block, and repeat the whole thing when the model changes.
A different starting point
Ortho2D takes the model and produces the sheet in one pass — views aligned on a shared projection anchor, hidden lines removed, curves recognised and labelled with ⌀ and R, dimensions placed clear of the geometry, and the whole thing scaled to a standard ratio on an ISO or ANSI sheet.
Side by side
| Make2D + manual layout | Ortho2D | |
|---|---|---|
| Result | Unannotated curves in one viewport | A finished, dimensioned sheet |
| Dimensions | Every one added by hand | Automatic, collision-aware, precision selectable |
| View alignment | You position each one | Aligned on one projection anchor |
| Duplicate curves | Common; cleaned up manually | Flattened — one line on paper, one entity in the file |
| Section views | Separate operation | Draggable cutting plane, hatched cut faces |
| When the model changes | Run it all again | Reload and regenerate |
| Needs Rhino open | Yes | No — it runs in a browser tab |
How to do it
- Drop the .3dm inOrtho2D reads Rhino files through a WebAssembly reader loaded on demand. Your model is parsed locally.
- Check units and orientationRhino files carry their unit, so it is read automatically. Use the quick orientation presets if the model was built on a different up-axis.
- Compose the drawingChoose views, place a section plane, set the dimension style — arrowheads as filled, open, architectural tick or dot — and pick your sheet border.
- ExportDXF to carry on in CAD, PDF to issue, SVG for presentation boards and laser cutting.
What Make2D gives you, and where it stops
Make2D is a good curve extractor and was never meant to be a drawing tool. It projects the visible and hidden curves of your selection onto the construction plane and sorts them onto layers. What comes back is geometry: no dimensions, no sheet, no border, no title block, no stated scale and no alignment between one projection and the next.
The cost is not the Make2D run itself, which is quick. It is the hour afterwards — arranging four projections so they line up, adding dimension strings that do not collide with each other or the part, drawing a border, filling in a title block, and then repeating the whole sequence when the model changes. Ortho2D produces that sheet in one pass, and still lets you drag any view afterwards if you disagree with where it put things.
NURBS, meshing, and the one thing worth checking
A 3DM stores true NURBS surfaces. To project them Ortho2D evaluates the surfaces to a fine mesh, removes hidden lines against that mesh, then re-detects circular and arc features in the result and labels them. For ordinary drawing work the output is visually indistinguishable from an exact projection.
Where a glance is worth it is tight-tolerance callouts. A fitted radius is measured from the evaluated geometry, so a bore modelled at ⌀50.00 can be reported as ⌀49.99 if evaluation was coarse at that scale. Check recovered radii against the model before a drawing goes to a machinist. Separately, the silhouette of a doubly-curved surface is view-dependent by nature — it is a true outline of what you are looking at, not a feature edge you can dimension to, and it will move if you change the view.
Objects, layers, and where the model actually sits
Geometry arrives as selectable objects you can rename, assign to layers, hide, isolate or delete before any drawing is generated. This matters more on Rhino files than on most, because a working 3DM usually contains scaffolding — reference planes, construction curves, a couple of abandoned experiments parked off to one side — and all of it will otherwise end up in the projection.
There is also a place-at-origin option that centres the model in plan and drops its base onto the ground plane. Rhino models are frequently built a long way from 0,0,0, surveyed site coordinates being the usual reason, and rotation, section planes and view fitting all behave oddly until the model has been brought home.
How each part of a 3DM comes through
| In the 3DM | How it arrives |
|---|---|
| NURBS surfaces and solids | Evaluated, projected, then arcs and circles re-detected |
| Polysurfaces | Treated as a single object unless exploded before export |
| Meshes | Projected directly — no surface evaluation needed |
| Layers | Preserved as selectable groups you can rename, hide or delete |
| Geometry far from the origin | Handled by the place-at-origin option |
Questions
Can I get 2D drawings from a Rhino file without opening Rhino?
Yes. Ortho2D reads .3dm files directly in the browser, so you can produce drawings on a machine that has no Rhino licence installed.
How is this different from Make2D?
Make2D extracts curves and stops there; you still lay out, dimension and title the drawing yourself. Ortho2D produces the complete sheet — aligned views, automatic dimensions, sections, sheet border and title block — and exports it as PDF, DXF or SVG.
Do NURBS surfaces come through correctly?
The geometry is evaluated to a fine mesh and then projected, with circular and arc features re-detected and labelled. For most drawing work the result is indistinguishable; for very tight tolerance callouts, check the recovered radii against your model.
Can I still edit the result in Rhino or AutoCAD?
Yes. The DXF contains real entities on real layers, so it opens and edits normally in Rhino, AutoCAD and anything else that reads DXF.
Does it handle blocks and layers from the 3DM?
Geometry is imported and grouped into selectable objects that you can rename, assign to layers, hide or delete before the drawing is generated.
What if my model is far from the origin?
There is a "place model at origin" option that centres it in plan and sets its base on the ground plane, so rotation, sections and coordinates all behave normally.
Other conversions
Load a model and see the sheet
Nothing to install and no account needed to try it. Bring your own file, or open the built-in demo part.
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