How is the Demo version supposed to work? And other gotchas of a returning customer

The instructions for adding it initially do have that information:

I seem to be out of luck.

The demo download pages says:
" This is the evaluation version. Saving and plug-ins stop working 90 days after you download, unless you purchase.
(After 90 days, it will still work great to learn Rhino and to view Rhino and many other file formats.)

I just tried to import an obj file to test the subdivision surfaces for an upcoming job to see if it will do what I need, but I get only:

Error importing file “ObjectPath/AndName.obj”.

I imported exactly the same file into the demo before (before it was expired) so I know Rhino can load it.

Is OBJ somehow not in the list of what the expired Demo can load?

Tom

That appears to be the case.
Expired V7 eval does not open OBJ files.
It should work.

I’ve logged a bug.
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-63064

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Hahahaha, I seem to stumble over every possible issue, first Cycles not working with multiple GPUs, now these…
Somehow I don’t seem to be compatible with Rhino… :wink:

I’ll have to see if I just stay with my old Rhino 5 or take the plunge regardless of my complicated relationship with this software and it’s - to me - alien mindset.

Working in Houdini for years has me seriously spoiled.

Cheers,

Tom

If V5 is still getting the job done for you, then there’s no benefit to upgrading.

Be well

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RH-63064 is fixed in the latest Rhino 7 Service Release Candidate

Don’t see that fixed here, still getting a black rendering with a GTX 1080 TI and a RTX 2080 TI in Cuda Mode. Windows 8.1 x64, 64 GB RAM.

I bought the Rhino 7 update in the meantime, since I have a job coming up that can use some of the new features. Anything special I need to do? Drivers are current, setup works with all other renderers…?

Cheers,

Tom

Hey John,

I don’t follow you? I thought Brian was saying that it’s fixed in the latest Service Release Candidate?
I have Rhino 7 SR5 2021-3-9 (Rhino 7, 7.5.21068.13001) installed - isn’t that the latest?

Cheers,

Tom

And is it true that when I download several package with the package manager in a row, I have to start Rhino once for every one of them?
Wow…

Gack!

Sorry. I posted my comment int he wrong thread…

My bad.
As you were…

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The item that Brian mentioned as fixed has to do with opening obj files in an expired evaluation version of Rhino.

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Ah - so it was the other bug.
Thanks.
I was trying the link to the issue but it was gone already, so I somehow assumed it’s about the dual GPU rendering not working.

I think after closing and re-opening Rhino about 15 times to install plugins one by one (and before that going nuts for one or two hours finding out why the installed plugins don’t show up), my limit of Zen-patience for the day is spent.
This will be an “interesting” ride…

I don’t believe you need to restart Rhino after every item is installed with the package manager.

I’d be interested to hear the alternative.
I got my license today from my reseller and thought I’d install everything I either had with Rhino 5 or that sounded useful. Since the descriptions of the items are in many cases completely useless, I also installed some things to hopefully find out what they are.
I installed something like 15 items via the package manager in one go.
I re-started Rhino, expecting that all the installed things would be available afterwards, like it works in pretty much every software I’ve ever used.
They were not.
I was especially interested in the substance importer.
I looked through all menus and preferences and finally found the folder where the plugins are.
Everything looked fine, they were all there.
I restarted again, to no avail.
Then I manually installed the rhp in that substance folder in Rhino.
That worked.
Hm.
I went to the forum to see what I’m missing, I read this thread since there was a notification, thought I try the dual GPU rendering - didn’t work.
So I checked if there are new Nvidia drivers - there were, downloaded those and installed.
No change.
Had Rhino closed down for that and when starting it, I noticed a window that said it’s installing something that sounded like one of those plugins I installed with the package manager before.
Hmmmmm…
No, that can’t be…
Closed and re-opend Rhino and the next item was installed.
Looking completely flabbergasted at my screen for a minute or two.
Are you serious?
Spoke a couple of mantras and gave into the unavoidable.
I’m a leave in the wind…
And then I sat there for a while just closing and opening Rhino.
Each time a different plugin was installed.

This is my first day with my new license of Rhino 7.
Interesting times ahead.

I don’t know who comes up with that stuff but Rhino is a bit like studying Zen.
You get continually confronted with very confusing things that seem to make no sense at all.
And over time, you may or may not get enlightened.
Or get mad.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Cheers,

Tom

@will and @Trav, you might want to read the above comment. It looks like there are some tune-ups to the PackageManager UI that could help.

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Yes.
Especially, have a description for each item that makes sense.
I had no idea if the stuff like “Raytraced Materials” or “Raytraced Blend Material” is needed for the released version of Rhino 7. I also do not know if the Grasshopper nodes for Cycles will actually work and be useful in Rhino 7.5 since they are so old.
Would be really great if you guys could go through all the entries once and add descriptions and make sure to explain if they are still relevant and what they do.
As I understand it, those I mentioned are McNeel tools.
Would also be great to have release notes in there for the versions.

And if that restart behaviour for each plugin is not a bug, I’d say it’s seriously mad.

Cheers,

Tom

P.S.
AMD ProRender for Blender is at verison 3 and halfways usable now. Will that ever see an update in Rhino or has AMD given up?

Had a look at the things I mentioned in above post and it seems to be mostly development-leftovers.
There also seem to be some test-packages in the manager.
Would it make sense to moderate what goes in there some more?
I don’t mind test stuff on Food4Rhino, but the manager, living inside of Rhino, would make me more confident, if I knew that it only contains packages that have a certain level of quality and relevance.

It’s really weird, the feeling I get from Rhino 7 so far is what a customer of a company I worked for as a freelancer once called “Banana-Software” : ripens at the customers…

And the speed with which you guys advance through the 7.x digits is also a bit bothering.
When I read on the forum that certain fixes are already expected to be moved to v8, I can’t help but wonder what happened to the old McNeel, that had a couple of years between versions to make sure that everything works BEFORE the next release.

I knew what I let myself into from the demo, but seeing that four months later I still can’t render with two GPUs in Cycles isn’t raising any confidence here.

Are you spreading yourself too thin with all the stuff you seem to have cooking these days?

Cheers,

Tom

That’s an old paradigm. The current paradigm is one service release per month with release candidates weekly so that bugfixes (and some new features that are not sdk-breaking) get to the users as fast as possible. The second part of the paradigm is to release a WIP also immediately with new features that are too risky/sdk-breaking to include in the current stable version.

And if you followed previous versions, you also know that not everything always worked as planned on the first release of a new version.

The paradigm may be old and there may be a new one (I didn’t follow the Rhino 6 cycle), I just don’t see the reality being that promising so far, looks rather hectic instead…

I guess I was away too long and got used to the development of SideFX Houdini.
Hard to get back to the CAD world after that… :wink:

Cheers,

Tom

Everyone’s reality is different…