Real life product design examples made in Rhino

Rhino Rhino for Windows
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It’s so nice to see so many great projects done with Rhino by experienced modelers and designers! :slight_smile:

Sin R1.
https://sincars.co.uk/configure/

My co-worker designed with 3ds Max the original Sin R1 prototype in 2012. It had plenty of wavy areas typical for mesh modeling, and glued plexyglass door windows. A year later I joined the company for 2,5 months and redesigned the cabin of the car and the side skirts (rocker panels) with Rhino 4. I also did some improvements on the chassis. The original front end was very long, so I had to cut and remove some areas off the existing 3d mesh front fenders and rear clamshell to make the car appear longer, as a proper cab-forward design, and in conjunction with my NURBS model. There were too many limitations (including narrow straight front windshield and requirement to use flat door glasses to keep the cost down), so the overall design is not good. I left the company before doing a completely new design for the front and rear, because the company’s owner was a d**k. :slight_smile:

Before (fully designed with 3ds Max by my co-worker):

%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BA%D0%B0_408751_514593945228696
%D0%A1%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%BA%D0%B0_408751_514593945228696960×720 177 KB

After (middle of the car made with Rhino 4 by me; my co-worked did a redesign of the rear bumper with 3ds Max):

3599-SIN_R1_Road_57
3599-SIN_R1_Road_571226×815 168 KB

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First release video is up. (No the animation was not done in Rhino…)

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My work…(at some point of life)…
Lots of iterations in Rhino and Grasshopper but final touch (the twist) using progressive CageEdit.

celebrity-edge-jacuzzi
celebrity-edge-jacuzzi1200×800 123 KB
B36C3593-92BD-4E4F-A9DA-EDA396F94BB6
B36C3593-92BD-4E4F-A9DA-EDA396F94BB61154×866 365 KB

The crown for jacuzzi had a better idea, diamond pattern, lost in manufacturing
PS images not mine

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Spotted this one today:

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Ok, so this comment made me go and look, and holy shit:

image
image966×300 31.6 KB

I knew they used Alias from the Samsung v Apple lawsuit where pictures clearly showed the Alias interface and even their patch layout, but Rhino is new… I wonder what lawsuit will reveal some Rhino images in the future? :smiley:

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Holy shit? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention. Rhino is used in all major companies, regardless of what other software they use. I work with many consumer products/car companies, and I can tell you most of them use Rhino when they don’t have time to deal with the cumbersome workflow of Catia, NX, Creo, Solidworks, etc. Eve if those are their platforms of choice, Rhino is always used for specific tasks.

In the case of car companies we give them a lot of details and cutters created in Rhino/Grasshopper that they use to import into their Enterprise Hippopotamus of choice and boolean the shit out of their models with our Rhino>Step objects. They do have some powerful booleans on their side for sure, unlike Rhino.

Gather around the fire kids, I have a funny story…

Many years ago, I was in northern Italy working with a sports car company. They were my client’s customer, so I was there to help out with on-the-fly design and modeling trying to solve some packaging/fit problems. Those cars are very jammed-packed with stuff (lots of metal and nuts and bolts and stuff) so it’s hard to find spaces for non-drivetrain stuff.

My client’s head of engineering was also on this trip with me. He asked me to solve some fit issues of in-dash components and give him a .step file of it. He had to give it to the the car company’s head of engineering, who had an off-the grid Thinkpad laptop, in a secret lab, that he apparently used for ‘special projects’.

They both took our models in a thumbdrive and walk away from the shiny Catia lab space full of machines, people, espresso and very nice shoes. He fired up the little Thinkpad and there it was: Rhino. Chief car guy used it to do quick fit checks and make early decisions of what would work/fit/be acceptable. Then he would come back to the ‘store front lab’ and give the team direction on how to proceed with their hippopotamuses.

Moral of the story: I could have given them a .3dm file.

Since that episode, more that 15 years ago, I always include a .3dm file with our data handoff. Everyone uses Rhino, they just don’t talk about it. So if you want to be extra helpful always include your .3dm when sharing with your clients (and their clients). It’s the nice thing to do, and it’s also the wink-wink of excellence.

G

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The problem with companies that use Rhino and more advanced surfacing programs such like Alias and Catia is that Rhino is not used for an advanced surfacing. Many automotive companies use Rhino primarily for the Grasshopper part or as a 3d file convertor.
Rhino still lacks:

  1. “Edge approximation” (like the one in VSR for Rhino 5) of split surfaces to help with creation of simpler and easy to edit adjacent surfaces.

  2. More advanced multi-side match surface tool. The current one in Rhino 6 restricts all 4 edges to the same type of continuity (either position, tangent or curvature). Plus, it lacks all of the goodies that the VSR “Surface matching” and “Surface align” tools have.

  3. Better Zebra analysis that also have an option for static lines such as the ones of VSR Light lines.

  4. “Smoothing”. Again, the VSR “Smoothing” does not have an analog across Rhino’s native tools.

  5. Better “Blend surface” that allows setting of the surface structure (degree, spans, factor, ration) on the fly, such as the ones found in VSR “Surface blend” tool.

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Funny how Rhino lacks, this, that, and the other, yet ‘everyone’ relies on it in one way or another.

Here’s all I know: Even with other options to leverage, I’d be lost without it. Rhino is CORE.

Here’s to continuous improvement…

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…or because for most enterprises the cost is so low, that nothing speaks against having it as an additional tool, just as so many others. Many own it, but still many don’t rely on Rhino at all. Its versatility is its greatest advantage but also its greatest disadvantage. But even if you just use it as a data converter, its already valuable and a critical part of a workflow. Many products are not created with just one CAD platform, so asking for a “real life” product design only made by one tool is already a bit misleading question. Better would be to ask for what Rhino is actually used for?!

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Yes, CORE may have different applications and extents, but CORE is the root of ‘it’, essentially.

And yeah, while Rhino may be CORE for me, products I work on don’t get to market on Rhino alone. I think that is a given…

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People do not RELY on it at all. They wished they could but they can’t. You can’t do a complete work business process with Rhino alone. People use it for convenience and since it’s rather cheat keep a copy on the side.
Or like myself, buy Rhino for the fun of it since I have some experience with it in the past and I use it once-twice a year for commercial projects. Learn programming with it, because learning programming when you can actually manipulate 3d objects is much easier (and more fun) than doing, say, network programming or console calculation stuff. I’ve pointed this many times I bought a personal Rhino license because of Grasshopper and Python, (Rhino5). Rhino6 I bought because of Raytraced, because I had some experience with Cycles in Blender. And I will buy Rhino7 for the SUBD.

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Semantics: Rely certainly has different meanings in context.

Ubiquitous may be another applicable tag. Either way, it’s a testament IMO.

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For me, Rhino is like a painter’s sketchbook.
One may argue if a painter even needs a sketchbook if his job is to paint on canvas. You can go straight to painting without sketching and trying your ideas, but it is very limiting. On the other hand, you can have amazing sketches, but most of the time you really need to go on the full-size canvas. Good luck with making canvas out of torn out pages from your sketchbook.

Also, you can find ideas from the sketchbook more open and interesting, but you are making living out of selling paintings, so you are once again in the store buying god damn paint.

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I know of several boat designers for whom Rhino is their primary or only design software.

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I love some people’s desire to argue with me has no limits, but it’s becoming annoying…

How many compared to the most?

Also, how much they struggle to get their work done?
How much time it takes for them to complete simple tasks compared with same tasks done in other software?
How much plugins and customizations they use?

I can bet they don’t do every single thing in Rhino.

If you wanna prove me wrong get all your facts right

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Don’t get me wrong, Rhino is my favourite CAD program since version 2. :slight_smile: But as a NURBS surfacing program there is still room for improvement. As @ivelin.peychev mentioned above, various major modeling tasks in Rhino take much more time than the competitor programs, or lack the same functionality. I already mentioned the most urgent ones that make Rhino difficult to achieve Class-A surface quality.
“Edge approximation” is extremely important, because it lets the user build much simpler adjacent surfaces with greater manual control over their shape.
Being able to examine the surface transition with static Zebra or light mines analysis is also a key feature that Rhino does not have at the moment (unless you own the VSR plug-in for Rhino 5).
Also, the X-nurbs plug-in is a great example of a proper “Patch” tool that’s far superior to Rhino’s native “Patch” command.

Another extremely important, but non-existing functionality in current Rhino versions is the ability to set user-defined limits to the surface structure (number of degree and spans in the U and V directions) while running commands such as “Match surface” (no matter if using the single edge or multi-side option), “Blend surface”, “Sweep 2 rails”, “Sweep 1 rail” and “Network surface”. And, being able to run static Zebra or Light lines during the execution of these commands. This combination alone would make Rhino very capable for Class-A surface modeling and will vastly increase its usefulness and user base. :slight_smile:

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the story never ends. funny to see it progressing

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Yeah… but perhaps it should continue in a different thread? I thought this thread was for linking to product examples that use Rhino, not discussions about the merits of Rhino (which does seem to follow me around, I admit). @Pascal @wim or another moderator could perhaps kindly break out the last 12 posts… perhaps oh, I don’t know… merge it into this thread or perhaps even this thread where the last “outburst” happened? :sweat_smile:

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Hello Everybody, I am a newbie here though I have been using Rhino intensively for over 15 years.

I don’t know if this qualifies but the entire early development of Peugeot’s i-Cockpit interior concept was researched and designed with Rhino.

Today, all PEUGEOT cars has adopted this unique i-Cockpit interior.

Rhino was used for following reasons:

-Fast and easy manipulation of 3D geometry with precision.

-Ability to exchange and share with other engineering software.

-Perfect balance as a design tool between, engineering and styling.

-Stability

Some example of early study here:

steering wheel 08
steering wheel 081480×675 455 KB
steering wheel 04
steering wheel 041480×675 340 KB

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very strategically put but very important word :slight_smile: