Navigation:  Hull Design > Moving Control Points

When hulls are modeled by the direct manipulation of control points, it's important to be able to easily and quickly drag the control points to "sculpt" the shape of the hull. To edit the shape of a surface, turn on its control points, and drag them to "stretch" the surface as desired. Rhino has control points that may be moved, but to see the sections update in real time, you should use the Orca Control Points. (To place control points numerically, see the OrcaMove command.)

Turning on Orca Control Points

1. Start the command from the toolbar, menu, or command line.

2. Select the surface(s) you wish to edit, and hit Enter.

3. The control points for the surface(s) will be shown. Orca control points, and the lines that connect them, are drawn differently than the standard Rhino control points. You may control the color of the lines in the control polygon in the Orca Properties dialog (). By default, control lines in the U direction (longitudinal, in general) are drawn in cyan, and the V direction (transverse, in general) are drawn in green.

You may select and move the control points in any view, just as you would other Rhino objects. If you have defined sections, you'll see them update as you move the control point(s). In real-time mode, the sections are computed from a temporary mesh, but when you put the point(s) down, the sections are re-computed in a smoother, more accurate manner. If you have turned on real time hydrostatics (see Design Hydrostatics), you'll see a control showing those values updating as you move the control point(s).

Note that if you have Osnaps turned on, the control points will honor those (End, Near, etc.). This can sometimes lead to unexpected results. Once you begin moving a control point, it can be helpful to press and hold the ALT key, temporarily disabling the Osnaps.

When moving points in the Perspective view, it's important to know what plane the point is moving in, since it's a 3D view. To make this process easier, Orca3D has the concept of Edit Planes. These are constraint planes, so that as you move a control point in the Perspective viewport, it will move parallel to the Edit Plane. For example, if the Edit Plane is chosen to be Station, the control points will move transversely and vertically, but not longitudinally. If the Edit Plane is set to Buttock, the point will move longitudinally and vertically, but not transversely. In the image above, the Edit Plane is set to Waterplane, so that points will move longitudinally and transversely.

OrcaEditPlane