Rhino 5.0 Status - Lightweight Extrusion Objects

In many large models, most of the geometry consists of objects that can be represented as an extrusion of a planar curve.

Rhino 5.0 has a new lightweight extrusion object that uses less memory, meshes faster, and saves smaller that the traditional polysurface used in Rhino 4.0. In Rhino 5.0 WIPs released on or after October 4, 2010, commands like Box and Cylinder create lightweight extrusion objects. Other commands like Pipe and ExtrudeCrv make lightweight extrusion objects when possible and make traditional polysurface objects when the resulting geometry is too wiggly to be handled by a lightweight extrusion object.

The new UseExtrusions command can be used to control the use of lightweight extrusion objects. If you want commands like Box, Cylinder, Pipe and ExtrudeCrv to make lightweight extrusion objects, then run UseExtrusions and select the “Extrusions” option. If you want these commands to make traditional polysurfaces, then select the “Polysurface” option.