Yes, but consider that €1500 / month is the price of Alias license… Also,
€3000 full life license will be one good business!
Salvatore
With Rhino, you can always get a job done.
The problem is rather the quality of the surfaces which is sometimes not the desired one. Then there are commands that almost never achieve what they promise, such as Network surfaces or Patches, which return surfaces that almost never join the surfaces of its boundary. From a good set of curves you get good surfaces, starting from these you could get improvements. For example, in freehand modeling, the possibility of being able to draw splines with the constraint of the curvature sign (always positive or always negative), without having to adjust it by manipulating the control points, even with a rather arbitrary positioning of the control points, would assume particular importance, but that it approximates the starting curve as much as possible.
Let’s face it, in real applications when a Sub-D based project is created, the result can almost never be converted into precise NURBS that respect precise geometric constraints. By this I mean that perhaps the modeling has focused too much on SUB-D neglecting the continuous improvement of modeling for nurbs surfaces
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Crowning options with live preview is something I particularly envy from Alias. I’m pretty sure someone more knowledgeable than me would be able to translate this to the Rhino devs. 
And again, not all of the surfacing tools and their options have made it to Grasshopper, please also prioritise this (e.g. match surface). At the very least, GH2 should eventually reach full feature parity.
I’ve requested an evaluation, it’ll be really interesting to see how it compares to ICEM Surf.
It costs more than Rhino + VSR but is cheaper than Alias or ICEM Surf. If it has the same functionality or better then it could well be worth it.
I’ll report back when I’ve had chance to use it.
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Yeah, I asked for evaluation too.
As you said, price is more than Rhino plus VSR but less than Alias (albeit not much less).
There is also the possibility to buy a permanent license.
It all depends on what the feature set is, I guess.
The flyer is talking about “full parametric”, “real time adjustments” “from construction, to modelling, to the final visualisation – all within one and the same tool” so that would be a lot more than VSR…
It also depends on the fineprint of the license (for instance there is maintenance for a hefty fee itself for the permanent license, but I don’t know if this includes future upgrades)
My calculations put the maintenance and lease options at equal expenditure after year 4 of payment and then the lease slowly getting more expensive year on year after that.
But I think we should look back at VSR and consider that if you do buy a permanent licence with maintenance (still not a cheap option) and then decide not to go forward with maintenance you’ll be stuck with whatever version of Rhino you’re currently running with Kajto. This could end up quite frustrating.
Not saying I like rental software though, I currently I don’t have any, but if the feature set is stunning then it could be worth the yearly cost to keep it up to date with your current Rhino version.
On a side note:
Today I received an email from Autodesk, telling me that from July Autodesk will not support any license activation for permanent licenses acquired between 2011 and 2014.
That means (as I understand it so far) I can still use the Shape Modeling plugin, but only as long as it doesn’t require a license activation (new computer, new installation of rhino etc.
My computer is getting old, so I might decide to buy a new one before, but I guess Shape modelings days are numbered…
Yes, they caught me with the same trick for my perpetual 3dsMax licence…now it’s completely useless and unused. Thank goodness for Blender…
I am sure they have it all written in stone in their EULA, but this shouldn’t be legal.
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Does it say when in July? I’m just starting to look at upgrading my workstation. That AD deadline might force me to get on it sooner rather than later. I’ve got a couple of software licences lodged with them (including VSR) but I’ve had no email as yet.
Are AD within their rights to do such a thing?
Autodesk email:
_
Our records show that you or someone at your company activated a 2011-2014 software version within the last 12 months.
_
Beginning July 1, 2022, Autodesk will no longer support license activation for versions 2011 to 2014, and we ask that you upgrade to a supported version. You can continue to use your product if you already have it installed, but we will no longer provide support, including re-activation, for these versions.
(…)
I think the email is triggered by an activation during the last 12 month.
I have no idea if Autodesk are in their rights to do so.
I assume they have their EULA formulated accordingly, so there is probably no legal way out of this.
Morally (given they will not offer any other solution for this) I think they can f**k off (to use the terminus technicus).
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Presumably T-Splines will also get kicked into touch, though that matters less now that Rhino has got its own act together. I’ve also got a Sketchbook perpetual license and a 3-year subscription for Fusion. If this is the way that AD treats their customers, they can go take a running jump when the renewal for that one comes up next year!
@MattE FYI Sketchbook went independent and no longer has the Copic license, so you should probably transition to Krita.
@norbert_geelen I’d love to see someone go to court on this though, that’s when you see whether the EULA was legal. EULA’s aren’t a one-way thing and these Autodesk f*** y** customer practices should definitely be punished. If possible, they even try to hold back on updates and up the price for their products… The shareholders are their real customers, end-users are the product.
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Autodesk’s attitude towards their small customers and subscription only stance is one of the reasons why I dropped AutoCAD after 20 years and switched to BricsCAD for DWG based work, it can also do mechanical, BIM with additional modules (i.e. there are the basic and pro versions and then Mechanical/BIM/Ultimate (the latter is pro+Mechanical+BIM) and you can use Grasshopper inside BricsCAD as well with the Rhino.inside plugin.
The mechanical and BIM are still being developed so they’re not at the same level yet as e.g. Solidworks, Inventor and Revit/ArchiCAD but already quite usable except for the (really) complex things that may require more functionality than it currently has but that should improve in future versions. Plus their developers are way more responsive than Autodesk’s. So I can’t be bothered anymore about Autodesk’s policies with AutoCAD and its verticals.
Combined with Rhino I can pretty much do what I need to do.
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From what I’ve seen on this forum recently and then picked up from further YouTube watching, I think I’m more inclined to invest my time in learning Grasshopper and Freecad (as well as Rhino, of course). At least neither of those are likely to be pulled out from under my feet. I foolishly thought that a ‘perpetual licence’ (as touted by both VSR and T-Splines - and RhinoWorks too, which got swallowed up by BricsCAD) meant something that I own could and used for as long as I want. It seems that AD’s (and some others’) interpretation of the term is somewhat different.
Note to Mcneel - please try not to fall into this trap in future. I appreciate that opening up your base offering to plugin developers leaves you open to such abuse, but this kind of thing isn’t going to endear you to your own user base.
@laborda - in case it is helpful, I do have a thing for this - does it do what you need? Note, at the moment polycurves (i.e. explodable curves) are not supported. Probably any number of other real life problems as well but maybe it can help.
CurveSymmetry.py (8.3 KB)
To use the Python script use RunPythonScript, or a macro:
_-RunPythonScript "Full path to py file inside double-quotes"
-Pascal
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Thanks Pascal, I’ll take a look and share my experience when I have the time.
So…this is going to take me longer than I thought! It’s a very in-depth plugin and quite tricky to learn.
Just from the few days I’ve had to play around with Kajto I can say that it feels like a complete package to bring Class-A capabilities to Rhino which is a very good thing.
I think the pricing is aimed at Alias users - rental is about half the cost of Alias which is a pretty good saving, plus the fact you don’t have to deal with Autodesk… the only issue I can see is lack of training material. I think a lot of people won’t be able to make it past the interface. T-Systems could do with a comprehensive youtube tutorial page demonstrating each and ever feature - I know… that’s a massive undertaking and probably won’t happen!
All in all, I think this will be an amazing addition to Rhino’s current tool set and if you’re serious about clean surfacing then it’ll save you time and allow surfacing quality on par with ICEM/Alias. You’ll just need to make it past the bewildering interface…!
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This is exactly my impression.
This seems everything VSR wanted to develop in terms of surface modeling (not so much in terms of using scanned data as reference for RE)
It has a very steep learning curve (as far as I understand it) and tons of options I havn’t fully grasped.
I don’t know, but given that in their pricing information they mention “maintenance” (yearly fee for permanent licence/included in yearly subscription price) there might be learning material available for paying customers?
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Hi @pascal
I tested the script and it seems that it helps in some cases, but not all.
I will send a review and comparison with vsr asap.
Joaquín