Migrating to a new computer

Wondering if there’s anything special required to migrate a Rhino installation, complete with customized Visualarq View Modes, to a new computer?

Hi David -
The following information should still apply: Transferring Personalized Settings [McNeel Wiki]
-wim

Actually not entirely. In my experience, much of what OptionsExport/OptionsImport did in the past is now broken. I probably need to rewrite that Wiki article…

If you are wanting to copy settings within the same version of Rhino from one computer to another, with Rhino closed, simply copy the appropriate settings.xml file from the original setup and replace the file on the computer you are setting up. Then copy over your custom toolbar (.rui) file to the folder indicated below, open Rhino and from Options>Toolbars, close the default workspace and open your custom workspace. That should do it.

The settings file is located here (assuming you have not created a custom scheme):

C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\7.0\settings\settings-Scheme__Default.xml

The toolbar file is normally located here:
C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\7.0\UI

I do not know about transferring VisualARQ display modes, normal customized display modes do transfer via settings.xml.

1 Like

why not migrating the old system to the new one? has windows got no such function? if not there sure is some mirroring tool which would do the same.

Thanks Helvetosaur.

Encephalon don’t think migration of an entire system is possible (but I welcome thiughts here). I believe the installations are specific to a machine. And if not then to an OS. I am going from Windows 10 to 11. If it were possible I’d be concerned that the system junk and broken registry items and obsolete startup calls on the older computer would transfer any handucaps to the new one.

No, not really. This is one area that Mac has an advantage. But since Mac is a relatively closed ecosystem and Windows is pretty much wide open, I would even hesitate if there was such a thing. I always prefer to start from scratch to be sure to have everything as new as possible.

As Windows 11 is basically Windows 10+ though, there’s probably not all that much risk.

Any wisdom to share about migrating projects with customized materials?

This boils down - I think - to ensuring previous projects can find the bitmaps associated with their materials, it appears. Ideally following on the new system the directory structure and nomenclature as the former system.

It seems Rhino is accessing a number of locations for materials’ bitmap images, but I have attempted to store edited stock rhino bitmaps where the originals came from. Sometimes they are in the folder the original material’s image came from, sometimes they are in a folder containing a limited number of texture images, mainly customized ones. All these are on the system drive.

Imported .objs store their images where I have downloaded the .objs, on a project’s drive, and objects imported from Sketchup go into a temp folder on C drive apparently created automatically on import for the purpose (learned that the hard way by deleting some temp folders.)

Is there a systematic reliable way to migrate all .3dm files, nestled in folders by construction project, without saving every one indivdually for migration including textures (far too many for that.)

My va View modes didnt come in with the Systems and .RUI import. So I exported Options from old machine and imported in new. That crashes Rhino.