Product design/presentation what's best Rhino, Solidworks, Fusion 360, ...?

Solidworks standard license in year 2011 was around 5000 Euros, excluding Photoview 360 rendering plugin.
Maintenance contract was optional, annual, around 1200/1500 Euros per year. If you choose for the Maintenance contract, you get the next annual version of Solidworks.

As the penguins from Madagascar would say,

ā€œHey now!ā€

Thanks James, solidworks is indeed the tool the guitar company works with, but I would never be able to pay that much money for a 3D software, so Rhino is the best solution for now I think and from what I see isnā€™t too hard to learn. On Monday I have a discussion with the Solidworks guy from the guitar company and will discuss this and see if I could work with Rhino files. Iā€™m still a beginner but hoping to make good progress in the next months, but at some point one must be able to buy the software he uses and 5000 + is absolutely out of question for me :smile:

thanks,

Hans

Iā€™m in a somewhat similar position, just starting out, wanting to design some custom electronics enclosures. So there are various knobs and hardware that have to be assembled together, but also Iā€™d like to be able to create a nice curved surface, say like a vintage 50ā€™s radio. Iā€™ve done a first project in Rhino, but actually Iā€™ve found it somewhat frustrating, and Iā€™m thinking maybe I need something more like Solidworks, Inventor, or most likely, Fusion 360.

My experience so far has been a bit different, and the main cause of frustration - not being able to easily experiment with alternatives and make changes during the design process in Rhino. Lately Iā€™ve been trying out Fusion 360. There are a lot of things I donā€™t like about it - the whole ā€œcloud appā€ thing for one, and also itā€™s buggy and sort of half-finished, and well, Autodesk. But anyway, to illustrate the point - I wanted to make this particular shape:

I made a box, drafted the faces, split it, scaled up the top part, raised it, lofted between the top and bottom, put fillets on the edges, and shelled it. Nine operations. Then I thought, actually, I want a bigger angle. So I double-clicked the draft operation in the timeline to edit it, and changed the angle from 9 to 12 degrees:

I hit return, and boom, done:

So hereā€™s the same guy in Rhino. Made with similar operations, except shell, because ā€œpolysurface is not closedā€. Whatever that means.

Then I went about trying to change the angle. Ok, so there are some cool things you can do in Rhino:

But in the end, the solution I found after an hour or so was:

I mean, it just canā€™t be done, as far as I can tell.

The other thing is about assemblies. In Solidworks, Inventor, Fusion 360, etc., you can put objects into their own containers, and then connect them to other objects, specifying that certain points or surfaces should always stick together, holes should be concentric, and so on. Then you can kind of slide things around, and have them stay attached in the way you expect. In my first Rhino project, I had a frame made of aluminum profile, some curved sheets that attached to it in a certain way, and a bunch of hardware for the control panel. I know you can use layers to keep groups of objects separate, but it drove me crazy that things wouldnā€™t ā€œstick togetherā€ the way I wanted when I moved them. I guess that RhinoWorks could help with that. I havenā€™t been able to try it, but it looks kind of ā€œklunkyā€, and is half the price again of Rhino. There doesnā€™t seem to be any plugin that adds the kind of history-based rebuilding like above though. And anyway Iā€™m on a Mac, so no plugins for meā€¦

So I look at that guitar and I think, Rhino would do a great job of making a nice complex curved surface for the body, which you could tweak endlessly with the control points. But after that, model and assemble the pickups, knobs and other hardware, build the depressions into the surface for them, and then ā€œoh, letā€™s move those knobs around a bit, reposition the bridgeā€¦ā€ It seems to me youā€™d really want to be in a history-based CAD software at that point, for experimenting with alternatives.

I imagine someday Iā€™ll be able to buy Rhino for Mac, with T-Splines and RhinoWorks. And Iā€™ll look at the $2500 price tag and think, hmmā€¦ well now Iā€™m paying $300 a year for Fusion 360. Its surfacing is ā€œgood enough for rock nā€™ rollā€ - and Rhino still doesnā€™t have a history timeline. Oh, UnrollSrf, Iā€™m going to miss you!

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RhinoWorks will shortly cease to be, so that (ā€œkind of klunkyā€) door is about to swing shutā€¦

Itā€™s pretty cool expensive though about 1500 I think. It doesnā€™t have near the functionality of modoā€™s modeler but itā€™s still a step in the right direction.

Thanks,
James Burnette
423.505.9684
Burnettearms.com

Hi NadaNix,

so for you you think Fusion is better for this ? I really donā€™t understand there isnā€™t a more designer (simplified) version of Solidworks for this kind of job. So far I really like the approach of Rhino, really love it but I must say Iā€™m a little lost in this D software world, I paid for Strata D when I started, then moved to Cinema 4D with the small but very usefull Viacad for complex buttons etc, but now I must say I hear that many people work with different software, whatā€™s important in the end is to be able to show a very nice design presentation and also be able to send it over to solidworks for more technical work on the guitar shapes, itā€™s a real jungle to choose from.

What I really think is cool is the number of good tutorials, I learned a lot with essential training so far and now am looking at some cool tutorials on Digital Tutors but I donā€™t seem to find that many on Fusion for now, the ones on Rhino are really cool and have nice presentation quality which is something that is important for me too.

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?tid=31&cid=456
http://www.ak3d.de/all/3d_car_tutorial_book_animation/

thanks,

Hans

If a company hired me tomorrow to design a guitar by myself, from start to finish, and I had to buy the software myself, I would use Rhino and Fusion 360 together. Fusion 360 is much more like Solidworks than it is like Rhino. Fusion 360 seems to be Autodeskā€™s attempt at exactly this kind of simplified version of Solidworks for designers. Not simplified by being just a cut-down version like ViaCAD, but improved ways of interaction that are less complicated and confusing.

At the moment, Rhino for Mac is free, even for commercial use. Iā€™d use it to design the overall shape of the body and neck. It has more advanced tools to create beautiful curved surfaces, with a lot of control. The history timeline of Fusion 360 is less important for that part of the design process, because you can still make a lot of changes by just grabbing the points and handles, and moving them however you want.

Then Iā€™d pay $40 for a one-month subscription to Fusion 360. Iā€™d bring the Rhino file in to add the pickups, knobs, and other hardware. Iā€™d put the depressions in the surface for the knobs using blend, loft, or fillet to a hole operations in Fusion 360. That way, if I want to move the knob, I just move the hole, and everything updates automatically.

Well, thatā€™s what I would try to do anyway. I havenā€™t actually done something like that, but Iā€™ve read that itā€™s a very common workflow. A designer will concentrate on the aesthetics of a shape in Rhino or Alias, and then send it to an engineer who will add in hardware and other ā€œfeaturesā€ in Solidworks or Inventor.

However, if I had to pay full price for Rhino, I would really have to think twice about it. Iā€™m sure itā€™s better than Fusion for surfaces, though I think you really need a lot of practice and learning the tools to take advantage of it. It may be that Fusionā€™s surfacing tools are ā€œgood enoughā€ for me - and often ā€œgood enoughā€ is actually better than ā€œthe bestā€. I think Fusion 360ā€™s history timeline and assembly tools would make the process of adding and adjusting the hardware much easier than it would be in Rhino.

Iā€™m coming from the point of view of someone who would like to do some nice surface design, but also make experimental changes to shapes and assemblies that canā€™t really be done by moving control points around. You may be in a different situation, if your main focus is on the aesthetic design, and you have a CAD person youā€™ll work with who will do the latter part of the process in Solidworks. In that case, Rhino may be everything you need.

Iā€™ve heard it said many times that Rhino is great for freely experimenting with forms, changes, and variations, whereas parametric CAD systems like Solidworks are very rigid and you have to have everything planned out before you start. I just wanted to give a different perspective, from someone who has found Rhino to be, in many situations, rigid and difficult to make changes in. I think with recent developments in hybrid direct/parametric software, and new products like Fusion 360, comparisons that may have been valid just a few years ago are not necessarily the case anymore.

Hans, when you are modelling things in Cinema 4D, are you using subdivision surfaces? You might be interested in T-Splines, itā€™s a plugin for Rhino that works in much the same way. Itā€™s also included in Fusion 360. It works with Fusion 360ā€™s history too, so you can always go back and change the shape, even after youā€™ve cut holes in it and so on, which you canā€™t do in Rhino. There are a lot of good tutorials included in Fusion 360 too.

You would probably do things in several stages:

  • designer creates the overall aesthetic shape and precise surfaces in Rhino, but without the detailed hardware features.
  • designer adds a quick ā€œmock upā€ of the hardware features, perhaps in Photoshop, for test renders and approvals.
  • send the Rhino file to an engineer who adds final hardware and other feature details in Solidworks.
  • send the Solidworks file back to Rhino, or Cinema 4D, Keyshot, etc., for finished renders and approvals.
  • changes in the hardware features can be made by the engineer in Solidworks.
  • changes to the overall shape and surfaces can be made by the designer, and the updated file replaced into Solidworks and automatically updated.

Iā€™ve heard that this is a very common workflow. Hope that helps!

Some links to guitar and Rhino related info:


http://www.luthiertool.com/guitar_3d_cad.html

http://www.tsplines.com/community/casestudies/surfacingfromcurves.html

Iā€™m sure there is more out there.

I think youā€™d be hard pressed to find software with more training and support than Rhino has. I think it would be a good starting point and maybe adding T-Splines down the road.

I use Rhino for design and the CAD/Tooling department uses SolidWorks for the engineering and tooling. I do the surface design ā€œstuffā€ that Rhino is good at and they do the engineering/tool ā€œstuffā€ that SolidWorks is good at. I donā€™t want to get involved in what they do and they donā€™t want to do the kind of work I do, itā€™s a nice relationship. Rhino and Solidworks get along fine.

Hi NadaNix,

thanks a lot for your input on this, you made me very curious and so I tried out Fusion 360 to check, first I think the fact that the UI looks simpler was great, I checked out some videos and indeed itā€™s a promising platform, but then as soon as I started to draw a few sketches it was not that intuitive as Rhino, I had a hard time drawing and playing with simple lines, sometimes the handles just didnā€™t let me move things around as suggested in the video, maybe my internet connection isnā€™t good enough but it felt very slow to work with so Iā€™m not sure this will be a good solution for me right now, the price and fact that T-Splines is in the soft is indeed a very nice + but it has to work in the end and for some reason I find it to be very sluggish here.

Iā€™ll be testing a little more and see how it will react, but my Rhino experience was a little better since one week.

Thanks,

Hans

Wow, thanks mcramblet, thatā€™s actually amazing stuff on the guitar tutorials, didnā€™t even know this existed :smile:
thanks for that !

For me I have to be able to make a fulll design and also all the parts related to the guitar (bolts, tremolo etc) so I can make a product presentation of it and also send the basic body and neck design to the manufacturing later on.

best,

Hans

Ok after some more tests, I was able to do some more work in F360 so itā€™s actually very easy to work with. Iā€™ll be doing some tests in both Rhino and F360 and see which one is best for me. thanks, Hans

Do you find it fast to model things in Cinema 4D? Because Iā€™ve heard that some people like to do their initial concepts in a polygon/sds modeller like C4D or Modo. Then they make a nice render to get approval. After that they make the precise surfaces in Rhino or T-Splines, and the hardware/engineering gets done in Solidworks. It might save you the work of doing a lot of detailed modelling of the hardware in Rhino, that will never be used in manufacturing. I donā€™t know - just something to think about.

The drawing tools in Fusion 360 are awkward, theyā€™re a bit stuck in the oldschool ā€œ2D sketch on a planeā€ paradigm. Donā€™t even try to make it work in the way Rhino does, mainly with networks of profile lines and curves in 3D space, and skinning surfaces between them. Youā€™re better off working more with the solid modelling and t-spline sculpting tools I think.

The modeling part in Cinema 4D is cool for basic things, but Iā€™ve always found it hard to do everything in it, but then Iā€™m not a good modeler either, so the reason I bought Viacad to make small knobs with fillets that were hard to to in C4D.

Actually Iā€™m impressed with both Rhino and also Fusion 360, whatā€™s interesting is the fast results you get in F360, but Iā€™m not decided yet, thanks again for your input, much appreciated.

Hans

Here is more details if you are also interested in actually producing real guitars.

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Thanks a bunch Bob!

Testing more, Rhino seems really the winner in modeling and I had fastest results, however wish it had a few features like Fusion 360 (drawings from 3D models in really cool and easy in Fusion 360). Really a complex world 3D :smile:

thanks,

Hans

Dave,

Check out this webinar tomorrow at 11 PST.

http://www.novedge.com/webinarseries/default.asp

Thanks,
James Burnette
burnettearms.com

Hi there Hans,

You seem to have been given a huge amount of information so I am not sure what I can really add but here are my two cents.

Rhino is great for many things from conceptual work through to production work. The joy of conceptual work is that there is less of a requirement for everything to be ā€œmeasuredā€ if you know what I mean. Rhino excels in this respect. On the flip side, Rhino`s ability to produce free-form surfaces far exceeds the industry standard solid modelling software such as Solidworks, SolidEdge, Spaceclaim etc. Having experienced all these pieces of software I really do have to say that rhino as a standalone industrial design program is awesome but severely limited when it comes to anything solid/parametric. Rhino in combination with a solid modeller is the optimal solution, however it becomes an expensive exercise. If you want to be serious about design and meet current industry standards I would recommend a combination of Rhino and Solidworks/Solidedge/Spaceclaim. From my experience you have to use the best tool for the job, and currently unless you have $$$$$$ and can afford to get a full CATIA suite then Rhino and a solid modeller is the only way to go.

My two centsā€¦correction, my fifty cents.

Rupert.

Hans, it would be great if you could post here some details of what you decide, and why. I donā€™t want to push anyone in any direction, Iā€™m really a beginner trying to understand the differences between Rhino and other cad software - in what situations it makes sense to use one rather than the other.

I donā€™t really know what you mean. I keep hearing that Rhino is great for conceptual work, freely trying out variations and changes. While with Solidworks-style cad, everything is ā€œmeasuredā€, locked down and inflexible.

Hans was talking about modeling some knobs for guitars. I also need some custom knobs for my project, so I decided to try a comparison. On the left is a knob I modeled in Rhino, on the right a similar one in Fusion 360:

I used a couple of lines and a spline, revolved to make the main knob shape. Then a circle swept along a spline to make the cut-out, a circular pattern/array, and some fillets. The experience of doing the basic modeling was roughly the same in both. There werenā€™t a lot of extra steps in Fusion 360, I didnā€™t have to think about dimensions or constraints. If anything, it seemed a bit more straightforward.

The big difference came when I decided I wanted to try some changes - a bit different overall shape, shallower cutouts, and more of them.

In Fusion 360, I could simply grab and move the points of the profile curves around, enter a new value in a number box for the number of pattern instances, and adjust the fillet radius. Everything updated in real time. I was just dragging things around with the mouse in the 3D viewport, until I saw what I wanted.

In Rhino on the other hand, I had to revert to an earlier version of the file, change the profile curves, and then manually re-do the pattern, all the surface trimming, and re-apply the fillets.

Going from the first version to the second one in Fusion 360 took only a minute. The experience was interactive and immediate. I could easily nudge and push, here and there, and tweak it until it looked right.

In Rhino, it took many minutes and a long series of manual rebuilding steps, until I could see the results of even a small change. And if it wasnā€™t right, then, start all over againā€¦

So I have a hard time understanding what people mean, when they say Rhino is so much better for concept development, flexible changes, and experimenting. It took me less than five minutes to generate all of these alternative designs in Fusion 360. In Rhino, I didnā€™t even want to try.

Itā€™s not my intention to come into the Rhino forums and promote an Autodesk product. I really want to like Rhino, there seem to be a lot of cool people doing really cool things with it. I like McNeel as a company, their support and community, much more than Autodesk.

Maybe someone else could comment about where Rhino would be easier, faster, more effective, or do things that are simply not possible in something like Fusion 360, in terms of doing something like modeling a guitar? Iā€™m having trouble finding specific, concrete examples that could explain it to a beginner like me, rather than kind of general statements that Rhino is awesome for conceptual free-form workā€¦ ??

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Hi everyone, and sorry for the late reply.

Finally I went with Fusion 360 in combination with Simlab for rendering, sorry for this, I really like Rhino and itā€™s a very capable soft for sure also the best documented I found so far with excellent tutorials, and probably it would be even good to have Rhino for some additional complex things later on but budget is limited so ā€¦ but for me itā€™s really important to have a parametric soft as I see myself going back often to do small changes and itā€™s easy in Fusion. Also most of my modeling is more related to solid modeling and I wasnā€™t very happy with the results of a test guitar body in Rhino especially the errors on the fillets made me worry. This is for the moment the hardest part in Fusion 360 as there are not that many learning tools out, but the soft is easy to use and I managed to make the same body as in Rhino in less time.

Thanks again to everyone here and Iā€™m sorry I didnā€™t choose Rhino,

best wishes,

Hans