Pedro de Azambuja Varela

Architectural models are usually very good at representing space and rather bad at representing time. We can model a wall, a roof or an entire building in detail, but it is much harder to ask a simple historical question: what existed here in 1700?

Historical Time is a small experimental plug-in I developed for Rhino 8. It assigns a creation year and, when relevant, a destruction year to each object. A document date can then be changed to explore the model through time.

The aim is not to replace archaeological stratigraphy, HBIM or richer systems such as the Extended Matrix. Those approaches can describe sources, activities, uncertainty and relationships between historical units much more rigorously. Historical Time occupies an earlier and lighter stage of research: it lets us assign provisional dates, test interpretations visually and identify useful historical phases while working directly with the model.

The basic idea

An object created in 1700 and destroyed in 1850 is visible during that interval. An object without a destruction date continues to exist after its creation. Objects without dates remain explicitly undated rather than being silently assigned an arbitrary year.

The document can be viewed by Year, showing what existed at one moment, or by Period, showing every object that existed at any time within an interval.

• Historical filters the model using the selected year or period.
• All temporarily shows the complete model.
• Undated Only isolates objects that still need temporal information.

What it can do

• Assign creation and destruction dates to one or many selected Rhino objects.
• Filter the viewport by a single year or by a period.
• Keep selected objects visible while they are being edited.
• Colour objects by creation year without changing their Rhino materials.
• Display date labels and the current year or period in the viewport.
• Use built-in gradients or import .cpt colour palettes.
• Preserve temporal data as Rhino Object User Text.
• Undo date changes using Rhino’s normal Undo command.

The colour, visibility and label effects are temporary viewport graphics. Historical Time does not overwrite object materials, layer colours or permanent visibility settings.

Download

This first public test package has been built and validated in Rhino 8.36 for macOS. Windows validation is still pending.

Installation

1. Download HistoricalTime-0.3.0-rh8_36-mac.yak.
2. Drag the .yak file into a Rhino 8 window.
3. Accept the installation and restart Rhino if requested.
4. Type HistoricalTime in the Rhino command line.

First use

1. Select one or several objects.
2. Under Selected Objects, enter a year in Created.
3. If the object ceased to exist, enable Destroyed and enter its final year.
4. Under Document Time, choose Year and enter the date to inspect.
5. Select Historical to filter the model.
6. Try Period when the research question concerns an interval.
7. Optionally enable creation-year colours, object labels or the viewport date.

How the data is stored

Historical Time writes HistoricalTime.Created and HistoricalTime.Destroyed as Object User Text. The information remains inside the .3dm file and can be inspected independently of the temporary viewport display.

This makes the plug-in useful as a lightweight entry layer for historical modelling and as a possible bridge to GIS, Blender, IFC and more structured HBIM workflows.

Current scope

Historical Time deliberately uses a minimal temporal model: Created, optional Destroyed, and a document Year or Period. It does not yet represent uncertain dates, competing hypotheses, historical sources or stratigraphic relationships.

That limitation is part of the experiment. Instead of demanding a complete historical data structure before visualisation begins, the plug-in allows chronology to emerge through interaction with the model. A more formal system can follow once the historical interpretation becomes sufficiently stable.

Historical Time 0.3.0 remains experimental software. Work on a copy of an important .3dm file and report unexpected behaviour before adopting it in a critical workflow.

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Author: Pedro Varela
Version: 0.3.0
Platform: Rhino 8.36, macOS
Status: Experimental release