Rhino layers and blocks in Blender

A Rhino model's organisation is most of its value: layers by element, blocks for repeated furniture and fixtures. Exported files tend to lose it. Rhino2Blender carries both across, so a Blender scene is organised the way the Rhino model is.

Layers become collections

Rhino's layer tree, Building::Facade::Mullions and so on, becomes nested Blender collections with the same names. Each object also records its full layer path, in a rhino_layer custom property, for scripts.

Every layer gets a collection, including empty layers and layers switched off in Rhino. A collection stays when its last object is deleted or moved, so anything set on it, such as visibility or a material, isn't lost. It is only removed once the layer itself is gone from Rhino.

Blocks become instances

Each block definition becomes a collection, and each placement an instance of it. Five hundred placements of one chair store one chair's mesh, in Blender as in Rhino. Nested blocks keep their structure at any depth.

Geometry inside a block keeps its Rhino layer. Under BLOCK DEFINITIONS ▸ BY LAYER, the add-on also groups block geometry by layer across every definition. Assign a material to one of those groups and it covers that layer in every block, at once.

When one placement must differ from the others, select it and use Make block real. It becomes an ordinary mesh you can change on its own.

A material for each layer

Because layers arrive as collections that stay put, they are the natural place to set materials: glass on the glazing layer, oak on the joinery. Material By Collection does exactly that, and reaches inside Rhino2Blender's blocks.

More in Layers and organisation and Blocks and instancing.