Just Starting My Rhino 6 Journey, How Can I Help The Team?

I just joined the Rhino 6 group, and have installed the WIP and launched it for the fist time. So far, the shaded view looks better to me, and the draw 2D command is giving me much better results than in Rhino 5. :grinning:

For a lot of us industrial designers using Rhino we use the make2D command a lot to generate drawings for instruction manuals, and perhaps more importantly for patent drawings. If Rhino could become the gold standard for patent drawings I think it would be a huge boost to your popularity.

A little background on me… I have been using Rhino since V1, I have taught Rhino to ID students at the University of Michigan, authored online courses for infiniteskills.com, I currently teach Rhino at the College For Creative Studies, where I have been for approx 14 years, and use it in my own design consulting business. Over the last few years there has been a big push in ID to learn both Rhino and SolidWorks. I’ve taught SolidWorks at CCS as well. SW is a very powerful program to be sure, but if I want to build something quickly, or something with complex shapes I still choose Rhino every time. When I build in Rhino I still feel as though I am sketching and can finesse the design. In SW I always feel as though I am building the data to send out for tooling.
IMHO, as Rhino 6 evolves it should not move towards trying to close the gap to SW (and admittedly I’m new to V6 so I have yet to really explore the direction it is headed). For a while I was worried that SW would replace Rhino at many firms, but lately it seems that SW (Dasi) are alienating their audience especially at smaller companies, and there seems to be an anti-SW backlash (just in conversations I’ve had with ID peers). The interest now is to see how the new-comers (Fusion 360, OnShape, etc…) will do. I’ve looked at Fusion 360 strictly for the T-Splines integration. This to me is where Rhino can really solidify it’s position in the ID world. As designers we all look at MODO, Maya, etc and wish for Sub-D to be integrated into Rhino. I know there is the T-splines plugin, but since that is an AutoDesk property now I’m concerned about it’s longevity in Rhino. If Rhino can incorporate a form of Sub-D in Rhino 6, then designers will go crazy. If you can combine the power of Sub-D type modeling (and still get useable data for manufacturing), with the generative power that you have in Grasshopper (and paneling tools), then seriously I can’t think of a shape you couldn’t make!!

Please let me know how I (and I’m sure the other Beta testers), can help you test and improve your product. Is there a list of “New & Improved Features” I can find to give me a list of things to try out? That seems to be key, as when I first fired up V6 it looks so similar that I have no idea what is new.

In the years that I’ve been using Rhino, I have always been amazed at the customer support I have received. I’ve never worked with a company, where the head guy answers my email questions. You’ve been great to the Educational Community, and you’ve given me an extremely fairly priced, and powerful product that has really let me do more with my ID career than I ever thought possible. I’d like to repay you and help develop Rhino 6 to be the best 3D program on the market.

Most sincerely,
Rob McCulloch

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You can go crazy now :smile:

2 Likes

That would be this one: