Rhinoceros

I need to learn how to use rhinoceros (or rhino for short) for my study as product engineer, and since its a pretty easy program to make rapid prototyping things, I am wondering how you would like it.

Its not freeware (sadly enough). It is costly, and it wil cost at least $995 for a starters package. You can get a trail version, but the manual is saying "The Rhino evaluation version is fully functional to give hands-on experience. After the first 25 saves and exports, models or renderings will no longer save."

The mayor difference with normal renderers is that its using something called NURBS. Its like vector drawing in 3d. Normally a sphere isnt really a sphere, but a lot of faces. With NURBS, the faces are connected to each other, making a perfect sphere. This way you can make very complex shapes without using lots of rendering work.

Its using an interface I am used from old quake editors (with 4 screens, top, front, side and perspective). It cant create games (like blender), but this piece of software is purely designed for creating prototypes and good quality renders.

If you want to check the program for yourself, I suggest you would take a look at [www.rhino3d.com].

I've been using Rhino for about 2 years now and it seems alright. I'm not as fond of it as AutoCad, but I've been using AutoCad for about 20 years, so I might be a little bit one sided.

What I can say that I really like about Rhino is how well students that are new to cad work take to it. When we switched them from AutoCad to Rhino, they produced 3d drawings faster with more detail than they had in the past. Which in turn helped them produce better drawings with AutoCad the next semester.
By the students 3rd semester (when they can use whatever they want) the use of AutoCad and Rhino was about 50/50.
One of the professors told me that he believed the visual students preferred the Rhino interface while the analytical students preferred the AutoCad interface.

So to me it is another CAD option, that may be great for beginners or visual
thinkers.

... i downloaded Rhino4-Trial recently and run through some of the tutorials - seems to be a great editor and redesigner/remodeler for 3D-objects with main focus on NURBS-modelling with many features for artists and model-designers.

As i'm used Lightwave and 3DS-Max with 4-screen-bays it's not so much uncommon, but i have to search all the tools and features at new menue-positions.

I found some tutorials for CAM and STL-remeshing and repair, so i'll play some more time around ...

Viktor

Interestingly Rhino appears to be working on a Macintosh port after years of being Win only. I signed up for the beta program but I haven't heard back from them. I like Rhino easy to work with and fairly powerful feature set.

Its one of the best tools available for modeling. The actual advantage is its huge family of plugins right from T-Splines for advanced surfacing to high end rendering.

Any one needs help in advanced online training in rhino let me know.

Enjoy.

Grasshopper is a plugin for rhino that can create complex structures, its well worth a look, plugins are available
for grasshopper that connect it to arduino, so you can influence your model from sensors, or your model influence
sensors, a light sensor could distort a model of a tower for example, and in real time, it opens up a world of
interesting concepts.

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Random Precision

I am another fan of Rhino - I am using the Mac beta at the minute, and I get on with it really well. I also really liked SolidEdge as a 3D package.

I need to work to scale drawings and be accurate both in terms of shape and dimensions. Soo far Rhino has allowed me to do that, aswell as freeform design very easily. I have a Rapman 3.1, and the step from there to Axon is really easy(I bought Netfabb but the stringing means I don't use it).