Rhino 8 Development

Serengeti (Rhino WIP)
137

Just to give some meaning for the expensive part.

I bought my student license, and the thing I love most Rhino for is this idea of giving students the power to keep the license as a working tool, because they know when we move out of college and start making money and using the tool we are potential customers for the commercial license.

The only reseller I found with price on their site, lists Rhino 7 at R$ 6.500. My Laptop Dell G3 3590 costs around R$6.000, yes, it can run on weaker laptops / desktops, but only with simple stuff. Both cost more than the biggest salary I know of on my engineering team at work.

The cheapest 3D printer I found was around R$3.000. With used semi pro cameras around R$1.000

But yes, I know the cost problem is not McNeels fault or anything, it is my country problem, but I do love McNeel, and the Orca3D team, for giving me the option to buy a student license and keep it forever, since here, the more I dive into the professional world, leaving the college world, the more I see that just working hard will not be enough to get where I want in life, and if there is something I will for sure do, is use Rhino3D, Grasshopper and Orca3D as tools to make that happen.

Despite all that, I am strongly against stripping rhino apart to make it cheaper. The plugin marketplace already does a great work with that, the only sad part is these plugins we keep loosing to greedier companies.

Sorry for any errors, my spellcheck for english uninstalled itself again …

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138

I think this discussion is difficult. I totally agree to what you say, still the reality is that there also many people around who are not earning as much money. A couple of statistic here in Germany claim that 1/3 of the germans having no money at end of the month on the bank account. And if we speak about Germany, just have a look at Eastern Europe. Even a young medician earns only 700€ a month (before tax!) in Poland. Not to speak of Bulgaria and other EU countries. It makes a difference how much something costs compared to your monthly income. And that people with low income are still buying things which are in theory way to expensive for their needs (like IPhones) is another problem. I’m just giving this thought here, that differentiating between commercial and non-commercial use cases is something to consider on a world wide market. But of course the world is not black and white, and as being said, its difficult.

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139

I don’t think money is a problem here.
Those young medicians from Poland agree to earn 700E a month to have 7000 or 17000E a month just decade later. Worth waiting and suffering.
I know what I am saying because:

  1. My origins are Polish
  2. My brother is a doctor and my girlfriend is a nurse
    PS. I was long time unemployed but having commercial licence was my priority before having smartphone or car.
140

Okay maybe this wasn’t a good example. I had friend who moved to Germany for that. If these numbers are true, than I don’t see the reason why so many polish people commute weekly to Western Europe because of this. I cannot understand why this is happening when there is not a problem with money.
I also see a strong ditch when it comes to wealth in my country. Anyway I won’t write much more about it, since it doesn’t follow the purpose of this threat.

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141

Everybody wants the better life but then gets confused by prorities.

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142

Would it be just as expensive to add a higher tier of Rhino? That is, for example, a “Rhino Pro” with an in-house developed VSR replacement (just to do some more CPR on that dead horse), more robust history and perhaps better fillets?

And speaking of expensive, I just saw a thread where the 5000 euro price of the Rhinogold plugin was mentioned again… (but that market can afford to pay, so I don’t feel sorry for them). :slight_smile:

143

Well, since VSR was commercially catastrophic because it was an extra 1000 at first, I’m not so sure if money doesn’t really matter. There was this complete opposite argumentation regarding this incredible useful plugin. At the same time people saying Rhino is cheap, it seems that going for another 1000 or even 5000 maybe is indeed a problem. The pricetag is obviously bound to the demand. But the demand is also bound to the affordability. And here we talk about commercial use-cases, which is not what my intention was about. From a commercial perspective the question is a different. How long does it take to get the return of investment?! And this is very individual.

144

I remember being incredulous that the VSR plug-in was just 1000 Euros.

145

I’ll preface this response by saying that we are all amateurs when it comes to CAD industry pricing, except for McNeel team themselves. I think they could give us all business classes on how to run a company.

Re: Price and affordability. They are different things. If someone not a student wants to start on their own professionally then need to buy a computer, probably a 3D printer, and get some software. Adobe is expensive AF, but in monthly payments. Fusion seems somehow affordable, but also as yearly payments. Yet Rhino requires $1k to start by buying a full license.

In many situations people need to go buy this stuff in the least financially appropriate time, like after getting laid off from a job, or after having to move for some other reasons and leaving a job behind, etc.

I think it might help some people if McNeel offered a payment plan, where you can buy a license and pay it in a year? Like $85/month or something?

That would help with affordability to those who find $1000 initial cost at a time when other initial costs are happening (like having to buy your freelancer computer).

Re: Price. Rhino is an absolute steal. I cannot think of any other software or hardware that could possible have a higher return on investment than Rhino. Just for reference, this is how much a very good fillet tool + surfacing costs, per year.

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(Edited some autocorrect hilarity)

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146

I couldn’t agree more ! Rhino is by far the most modest priced piece of SW I own in relation to its abilities. No subscriptions, reasonable priced upgrades, a development team that is reachable (…although they still do not listen to every wish I utter :wink: )… and a community next to nothing :grinning: -)

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147

Nothing else I have said. Again I was just saying that due to the affordablity of 3d printing etc. , a lot of non-professionals/non-commercial people potentially joining the market. The idea was just to pickup them by some simplified Rhino version, e.g. with limited exchange format, no scripting, no mesh and sub-d etc. Just a tool for hobby users. Like what Photoshop Elements is to Photoshop. I was never complaining about the price as a commercial user! I know at least 3 people part of this group. You cannot expect people to spend that much money for hobby reasons. Of course many spend thousands of dollars/euros on their hobbies, but depending on the country and your job it makes a difference if a hobby costs you 1500 or 3000 in total

Edit. Anyway, forget about it… I’m sick of explaining myself again and again because some of guys are inable to read carefully. If you believe this is a bad idea its totally fine. Not even considering such an idea, on the other hand is really sad. Because it show a bit of a hypocritical view of the world and clearly is a form of arrogance.

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148

I do not agree that Rhino should specialize or focus on what is already good. It’s already the best (I think) surface modeling tool, improving it isn’t going to help them too much. It’s true that they have (very important) work pending here, but just focusing on it will only satisfy those who have already paid. What they need to do more or better is to measure the industries and users they impact so as not to base their movements on their subjective experience, which no matter how expert it is, if it’s not the real data that makes you take the best decisions. I don’t know to what extent they measure this, I hope they don’t just settle for the profession the user assigns when creating the account or some survey of key people every 5 years or the thermal sensation of the community’s demands. I believe that their development strategy is very dependent on the development decisions they make, therefore they should be obsessed with having the best inputs to evaluate timing and thus efficiently balance the dilemma between opening up new markets or improving existing ones.

I believe that specific industries have specific problems with Rhino and that some of those problems will be common. By measuring the impact on these, they can prioritize solving them and include in the planning some room for innovation in other areas. They may be doing this already, but I wonder how valid or improvable the data is that justifies their moves.

Going to the web (Rhino.Compute) and embedding its application in others (Rhino.Inside) have seemed to me very necessary moves that should be made as soon as possible (at least Rhino.Compute). I’m extremely curious to know what results they’ve gotten, but I think it’s an investment for the long term that means a lot to consolidate their software. But I agree with others that opening more projects this big sounds like forgetting too much about the problems that current users have, especially considering that the SubDs are also quite fresh there.

On the other hand, from the user-developer side, if Rhino were an OS, I would say that it is like Linux, because it allows you to customize it quite a bit but from the deepest terrible darkness. I’m exaggerating, but I’m seeing other new APIs that are well documented, that everything works at first glance, that the SDK tells you to use it because it exposes everything you need without requiring years or being an expert to build on top of it. I don’t feel that the core or Rhino (at least the .Net face) is designed for generality to allow building on top, I think it is designed only for scripting (making calls to existing things) and some rhino features are left open so that they can be adjusted slightly, but they are not intended for others to continue their development, to extend them. Something that also demonstrates this, is that they don’t offer design guidelines so that your plugins have a coherent appearance with the rest of the software or other integration patterns. It is kind of friendly but within the chaos. It’s something I don’t understand, they have a community of developers that instead of encouraging them to build for them, they write code that you have to fight with or make ugly hacks to extend what they’ve done for Rhino. I believe that the sooner they change this culture from an ambiguous development to one that is truly extendable, the more return they will receive. But my impression about the way these heads understand the development of their software, is that they don’t want to. To some extent I understand, because making a generic functionality instead of a specific purpose can mean several times more time and errors. However, there is a very unbalanced balance that gives me to understand that making the functionality extendable is discarded by default. I believe that it is more intelligent to leave something halfway and extendable than to wait for a time to develop it properly that never comes.

I don’t think it’s been mentioned here, in case I’m saying it, the meshes need a lot of improvement. I understand that they are not the main purpose of software, but they are necessary for manufacturing and web applications. One of those improvements that would mean for several industries I think is a volume calculator that doesn’t depend on joining all the geometry together because nowadays boolean operations can’t be automated because they don’t always work, sometimes moving one of the pieces a 0.001 units is solved, but this is something impracticable when automating complex geometries, besides being terribly expensive computationally. Other tools such as offset or filet are not friends of automation either.

Depending on the day, I am happy with Rhino or not, but it is almost always a yes. Although I still see it as the mother of my girlfriend (Grasshopper) :rofl:. As long as they don’t raise their price, I want what they can get the most return so that they have enough mattress to be able to dedicate some time to change things in the UI/UX or/and so many other things that need improvements for years but are not done because they are not profitable and are important for me. I trust they will do well, unless they don’t measure enough.

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149

Wow, that’s a great deal. We just switched to NX and we paid a lot more than that where I work (like, almost double, I think, and that doesn’t include the startup cost and server hardware).

150

how about something similar to sketchup warehouse? i think with few adjustments and enhancements sketchup user base can be completely adsorbed by Rhino. Sketchup user base is IMO quite a big one.

151

Yikes!

152

Not gonna happen. Most Sketchup users I know use Sketchup, because they don’t even know how to model. Or are reluctant to learn how to model, because it’s supposedly easy in Sketchup (though I despise it). Rhino is too complex for them.
There are many alternative platforms in place already, so it would be mostly redundant to have a Warehouse imo.

153

what do you suggest as best alternative like warehouse for rhino? i only know flying architecture to get some free models… i agree sketchup is simplistic but many architects which are professionals use it. in some other post i suggested optional behaviour push pull skp like to be enablable in rhino where gumball extrusions would automatically result in boolean operations so one coúd mimic fast modelling.

154

not talking price skp is now probably even more expensive than rhino

155

As I stated in the original post, I’ve heard over and over that Rhino’s lack of an integrated asset library is the major workflow gap keeping designers from making the leap. With Sketchup and an internet connection, I can have a near instantaneous toaster or palm tree loaded into my model without leaving their UI.

I don’t think it’s true that skp users are reluctant to learn how to model. Many designers are very good at squeezing the most out of that software. The problem is that the skp skillset does not translate to other 3D software.

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156

There is no such thing as best, look for the filetype you want (step, iges, skp, 3dm, obj, fbx, ifc, to name a few) it depends on whether you want a mesh file or not, the renderer used (for materials & textures) etc. If you add the model type (car, cabinet) to a search engine search you’ll find plenty.