14 month later: Is Rhino V8 finally useable for us? My table stakes list

Hi McNeel team,

I hope you all had a nice holiday and are back to work with some fresh energy to get Rhino V8 ready for professional use for the rest of us who are still using V7.
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And this is what I came here to inquire about. I bought upgrades to Rhino V8 in November 2023, and now, 14 months later, I’m still hesitant to move to V8.
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I’ve been following Brian’s service release candidate notes for V8, and based on how many basic broken things I continue to see reported as just fixed in very recent service releases, I’m wondering how many more are still not fixed.
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I also follow here several post of Rhino for Windows users with some everyday problems, limitations, and regressions they encounter frequently, and if I recall correctly, last week someone was still having custom toolbars with lost icons!
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I don’t want this to be a bitching post, but rather a very constructive and specific call for prioritization of my main concerns that so far that have stopped me from using V8.
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So here it goes:
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1. Overall Stability:
We run V7 all day, and we have practically no crashes. Maybe one crash every 2-3 weeks or so. Is V8 anywhere near that level of stability? We all use powerful PCs with 128 Gg ram and decent Nvidia cards, like 3080/3090/4090.
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2.Stable, Self-updatable, multi PC custom workspace.
Access to a reliable and easy-to-understand custom workspace without a single important regression from V7 is a must. We need the following things working in V8, in the same way or better than they are working in V7 today:
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2A: It must never ruin, garble or delete any content of my toolbars, my buttons, its icons, or the macros inside.
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2B: I need to have the ability to save a file that I can store/sync in Dropbox and read that file with my custom workspace and toolbars in my 2 PCs. And I need to be able to make any changes to my workspace in my main desktop (PC1), Close Rhino, autosave the changes, sync to Dropbox automatically, and when I later open my laptop (PC2), and as long as I’m online (Dropbox is set to always sync the workspace file), when I launch Rhino in PC2, I see the updated workspace with the changes I had made in PC1.
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2C: I need to be able to a collection of toolbars that I share with my team, let’s call it “Fresco_toolbars_v1_250113.rui” and anyone in my team can have that toolbar collection open, along with their own toolbars and other custom workspaces. If I update Fresco_toolbars_v1_250113.rui, they can see the updates. If any of us mis-edits it by mistake, we can always replace it by a saved backup verison (saved somewhere else) and we are all back to the good old “Fresco_toolbars_v1_250113.rui” before someone changed it.
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3. Flawless work on layers/properties palettes. No weird display glitches, names/properties not updating, layer dragging not working, etc. Everything should work as well as it does in V7
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4.No import/export issues with .step, pdf, ai, STl, OBJ, FBX.
Everything should work as well as it does in V7.
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5. Display/Viewmode errors.
V7 has some glitches in this regard, but they are minor; V8 should be at least as good as V7, not more glitchy.
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6.Viewport performance.
We run very frequently very massive files, so we cannot accept any FPS performance hit compared to V7. V7 is not great in terms of viewport performance, but it’s very acceptable (except when using BPR shaders). Is V8 viewport performance at least as good as V7?
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I understand that for many here, the current state of V8 might be great for your needs/expectations, and that’s excellent! but for us these 6 points above (please note point #2 has 2A, 2B, and 2C sub-points) are table stakes.
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I think I’ve been very patient but after being excluded from the entire V8 WIP cycle by not having a usable enough WIP/Beta to provide feedback, and followed by now 14 months of owning a pool of licenses of a product that still seems to be a major setback for daily productivity compared to V7, I’m starting to lose hope.
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Can someone at McNeel with knowledge, care, and motivation to address these issues listed please chime in?
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Thanks,

Gustavo

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Out of curiosity since i just made the upgrade from v5 to v8 so missed whats in between and probably most of rhino 8 beginning before updates

But is v7 the best version of rhino? I keep seeing it being favorable.

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Hi Gustavo,
You have a copy of v8. Whatever I write is not really worth a whole lot compared to trying the latest service release and seeing if it works for you and your team. Regressions are given priority when fixing issues.

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I switched to Rhino 8 on the second try.
Now it works much better than before. And there are so many new useful features that I can’t stay on Rhino 7. Can you share the file “Fresco_toolbars_v1_250113.rui” ?

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@gustojunk this is not easy to answer and as Steve said, only you can tell after giving the latest a spin, but I do want to say a few things about the current state of Rhino 8 on some of the topics.

Window Layouts
Window layouts can be saved, but there is no associated window layout with your Rhino, if that makes sense. Rhino will start up in the state the last instance was left behind. The current state of your Rhino is saved in settings in %appdata%\McNeel\Rhinoceros\8.0\settings
I have no experience synching that directory with a cloud service though.

Toolbars:
There are indeed still reports of toolbars that seem to go off-track due to xml files being not removed, but this does not mess up the actual rui file. The last bug fix for this hasn’t been pushed into Rhino 8 yet,
Currently, custom rui files can still be reset to their original (last saved) state with the reset command. If you save changes to a rui, and users are loading this rui from a central place, the changes you make will appear at their end after a restart of Rhino. If the user makes changes to the toolbar (without explicitly saving the rui) these changes will be kept (and stored in the xml on their machine).
That being said, I still hope we can eventually get rid of these xml files for custom toolbars, but it is an open issue.

Layers:
An open issue is that Keyboard shortcuts don’t work when the layer panel has focus
Display/Viewmode errors:
What glitches you are referring to in Rhino 7?
Viewport performance
Comparable. Some modes are a little faster, some are a little slower. This can however only be verified by running some of your own models and comparing this side by side. I’d be happy to perform a test with a model of yours though and give you some numbers.

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Hi @stevebaer, @Gijs,

Thanks for your answers. Hearing that ‘it’s time for me to try and see’ is pretty good, it gives me a sense of confidence that based on what we need, V8 might already be there, or very close.
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Neither of you mentioned anything about “1. Overall Stability.” Last time I was doing some work in V8 (2-3 months ago) the app kept crashing, I was specifically working w/Shrinkwrap, Quadremesh and manual mesh face editing. Is the overall stability good now for production work?
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2A: Good to know that teh current back only adds blank icons, but doe snot ruin/delete any if our existing tools, that’s tolerable if it will be fixed soon.
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2B: Based on your feedback @Gijs, I do not see how I can maintain 2 PC workspaces in-sync. I think maybe what I need to do is to have a master workspace file that stays in sync, and how I arrange ‘instances’ of those toolbars in each PCs is locally stored in each PC, and I have to recreate each arrangement separately (And each PC saves its own XML of its workspace arrangement). That actually will work well as long as the actual toolbars’ content does get synched and updated. I’ll test it.
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3. Flawless work on layers/properties palettes. The lack of focus bug you mentioned is also tolerable, time to test this too.
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4.No import/export issues with .step, pdf, ai, STl, OBJ, FBX.. No mentions of this by your team so far, yet I remember seeing not too long ago issues with object names, vertex normals missing, etc. Are we all good now AFAYK?
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5. Display/Viewmode errors.

problems in V7: toggling on/off in the display tab things like mesh/surface edges, weird shadows when shadows are toggled, section view appearance disregarding appearance settings of color/thickness.
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6.Viewport performance. ‘some faster than V7, some slower’ is not a bad start. I will also try again PBR shaders in V8. I never understood why the display performance was so bad in V7, to the point that we had to stop using them in Rhino and we only use our PBR materials in Blender. This should not be hard to fix (buy what do I know!).
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This week I’m going to start ands I’ll report back here any major issue or regressions. I have no idea how to even start bringing my V7 workspace to V8, so it’s time to make backups and play around and see… unless you guys tell me: “you/we are better off if you wait another X months before you test V8 again”
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Thanks,
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Gustavo
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(PS: using Discourse on Chrome/Windows I cannot type any paragraph breaks, in the post preview, and the actual post once published all my text shows as single line, Like shown here, unless I type a point in the empty paragraph, see screenshot:

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Works
OK
here on an iPad.
This morning it worked fine on Chrome/Windows, will test in a bit.

Here
Chrome
on
Windows - no problem.

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I’ve been watching our crash reporting system closely over the last few months and I don’t recall seeing any that are coming in from ShrinkWrap or QuadRemesh. That isn’t to say there are crashes in that area; just that I haven’t seen any.

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For Stability,
All the crashes I’m getting in 2024 are related to plugins (mostly incompatible V-Ray 5) Otherwise, it is very stable, and the performance uplift compared to V7 (in shaded mode).

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I was very critical of V8 as well, but I recently switched to it because a client is using it and I must admit that it’s fine now (for me at least).

The worst things I’m still seeing are:

  • Python scripts being initially slower (some new on-demand thing it seems)
  • Materials jumping to different objects in rendered section view (fix on the way)
  • SVG icon editor/importer UX glitches (ongoing fixes)
  • Snapping toolbar occasionally pops up twice and needs closing
  • Selections occasionally refuses to work (confirmed clipping plane bug)
  • Layers panel misbehaving
  • Uncertainty regarding toolbar customizations

Regarding the last point, it’s just my inexperience and the fact that I don’t like how the new customization dialogs work compared to how it used to be, and I don’t have my .rui files on Dropbox but rather iCloud Drive, but so far it does seem to work.

So, still UX issues (and I bet I forgot/got used to some I didn’t list) but nothing show-stopping anymore (knock on wood).

I’m not really using any new features (PushPull is too basic to be of any real use to me, for example) but I’m not going back if I can avoid it because I do find myself using the unified custom mesh settings all the time!

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just this morning logged two OBJ issues, see here (with workaround)

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hi all,
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It’s good to hear that V8 seems mostly useable, but it sounds like we will have to live with a lot of glitches and bugs for a while. I really hope fixing anything that’s broken gets the maximum priority from McNeel. It’s nice to use new features, but it’s never ok to lose existing workflows, features and stability.

This for me is my biggest concern of all. Not just in terms of functionality but more importantly in terms of what it says about McNeel’s changing culture. I understand that we represent a tiny experienced and aging minority who works with Rhino using a very customized workflow, but we depend on that customized workflow and tools to be efficient, successful, and profitable.
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Unfortunately expert users in all CAD software, and in all software for that matter, are not the focus for developers and product managers anymore because we do not represent growth, new users, and what the majority cares about. In summary we are a pain in the ass, and the deprioritization of our needs by McNeel team has been heard loud and clear. I really hope McNeel does a complete reversal on this, and give us, the expert/niche users depending on custom tools, the same level of care we had in the past. That will restore our confidence in Rhino as a platform for the future.
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I’m also curious to hear @Helvetosaur’s take on the current state of customization. I know Mitch you have been instrumental to highlight all the blind spots on V8 in this regards, How do you see things today? How do you feel about the future? Feel free to message me directly if you prefer.
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My parting thoughts before I dive into V8 today:
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My 3 wishes for V9:

  1. Seeing V9 and a V8 Pro version of Rhino where everything just works, including full functionality of customization with the use-cases I listed in my first post in this thread.
  2. Focus on geometry level fixes of all existing tools that create bad geometry, specifically fillets, meshing, and direct-editing.
  3. Do not allocate any resources or attention to any new V9 features until 1&2 are fully executed with excellence, fully tested and passed and extensive and thorough QA process.

Thanks,
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G

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5 posts were split to a new topic: Rendering options (inside and outside Rhino)

One more thing: On Mac shaders compile much faster than on Windows, at least here on my laptop rtx A3000 card. It will depend on your workflow if that is an issue though. Once compiled, shaders are more precise and faster than in Rhino 7.

That’s good to knwo. 2025 is a very weird year so far > I’m seriously considering buying a Mac as my next laptop since when I’m on the laptop (traveling or light work at home), a Mac would be cheaper, lighter solution, and it run way longer on batteries.
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My Dell Precision (the thin/shitty one) is always hot, it barely runs for a few minutes on batteries and it costs like $3-4 when well spec’ed? So it may be time to switch to the managerial side.

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I’m sorry you feel that way, but I don’t agree with this opinionated statement. Hopefully we can change your mind on this in the future.

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hi @stevebaer, your disagreement is music to my ears. It’s my opinion based on what I’ve experienced, and my limited view of the whole picture. And hearing that my opinion is not the way you guys feel or plan to act it’s great news for many of us.

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Ok Day 1 first-impressions…

I installed the latest SR candidate as of earlier today, V8.16.something. And I brought my .RUI file from V7 and everything opened up fine, I arranged my toolbars around, even docked one on my toolbars as a tab in the default main, and I set my own side toolbar as linked to my default main tab. It was all easy, intuitive and nothing different than in V7, so great job on that!
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My toolbars do look very blurry, at same scale and same monitor where I run V7 everything I ported looks waaaay worse. But I’m not too concerned because the native/new/vector-based icons in V8 look so much better that my original custom icons looked in V7, so I’m motivated to update them all to vectors anyway. So here is where I’ve found some weirdness:
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If I drag a new/vector Icon from a default V8 toolbar (as a copy) into one of my toolbars, the minute I drop it into my toolbar it looks as bad as my old fuzzy icons. However if I open that same vector icon in the SVG icon editor and I paste in also via SVG icon editor into a new button then it looks nice and sharp. Why? is this a bug? Or is this cause because my toolbars a ‘legacy’ V7 toolbars?
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I really line the SVG icon editor, but it has a few bugs and limitations:

  1. The default transparency of a fill is 100% so it took me a while to figure out why my fill was not working
  2. The stroke thickness value does not change any stroke thicknesses. If I select a line with stroke value 1, and I change that value to something else the line stroke’s thickness doe snot change. If I unselect it and I select it again the value is still 1.
  3. Being able to scale/rotate object in the editor would be super useful. But I do not know if that capability exist, or it’s still missing.
  4. Having the ability to type text in the SVG editor would also be very welcome. I have many icons that have text drawn next to other iconography, such as these:

Tomorrow I’ll experiment with exporting my saved settings from V7 and importing them into V8. I’m thinking that I should probably skip exporting my custom display modes and start them from scratch in V8 to avoid troubles right?

Thx,

G

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I don’t know of any issues with transferring custom display modes.

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