I’ve been watching loads of Rhino Grasshopper tutorials recently and think the program looks excellent. I’d like to buy it but I am unemployed and don’t have the money to afford it.
Is it possible to buy licences for previous versions such as Rhino 6 or Rhino 7 at a discounted price? If not, then I don’t see how I can get access to this wonderful software.
I can recommend Blender (free and open source). It’s geometry nodes are similar (though more complicated, imo) to Rhino’s Grasshopper. And sometimes just the modifier stack can be similar to Grasshopper.
The learning curve is steeper for Blender, and Blender uses a different modeling paradigm (called box modeling or polygon modeling). Rhino uses NURBS modeling. Rhino is more suited for hard-surface modeling where Blender is more suited for things like character modeling, but you can do hard-surface modeling and architecture and even cars in Blender, too.
Blender can also do digital sculpting, rigging, animation, and pretty good rendering.
The interface is definitely difficult, but once you get it (by following tutorials), it’s not as bad as it first seems. And if you have a potato computer, you can also download older versions (2.79 is popular for old computers).
Most people get started with the famous Donut Tutorial by Blender Guru (and you will see nods to that donut in various places)
If you do try it out and like it, I recommend getting a cheap pen-and-tablet (the Wacom One or the Wacom Intuos) for like $30 to $50 bucks. These tablets can take the place of the mouse but are used like a pen. It’s optional, though, unless you want to do digital sculpting…then it’s almost a requirement (there are a few good sculptors who use a mouse though).
At least, it is possible to use Rhino6 in demo mode? I do need this on a Windows7 machine for the operator to be able to view my models. For now I am using MOI3D v3 No-Save version to see the models but will be better if I will be able to use Rhino6 demo.
P.S. It’s on a CNC machine that can’t be upgraded to any newer version of Windows.