Rhino has incredible potential, but right now it falls short for industrial designers who need robust, Class-A surfacing. As someone who, along with many colleagues, relies on Rhino for quick freelance or personal projects, it’s all too common to hit frustrating roadblocks when trying to create high-quality surfaces. At our firms we default to other tools, and only turn to Rhino for grasshopper or at home has a hobbist—but even then, producing the precision and polish we expect feels like a constant uphill battle.
Proposed Improvements
Core Class-A Surfacing Suite
Fillet and blend tools on par with Alias (G0/G1/G2 control, explicit span/degree settings)
“Copy everything in Alias” is not an interesting request. I mean this sounds like you don’t actually use Rhino at all, or had this AI-generated. Every single one of those things–minus the ones that already exist–and tens of thousands more are on the feature request list, but the idea that all or any of them are key to making Rhino a “real surface modeler” is just bull. Rhino IS the benchmark today, anything else is a niche of a niche product oriented towards a tiny number of well-heeled individual COMPANIES, never mind industries.
Implementing this whole boring list is not going to actually make inroads against the likes of Alias as the difference between Rhino and the “big iron” is not actually features, they don’t matter, what matters is the business model, the type of sales force, highly paid coked up salesmen, required to get in to those markets.
Rhino’s accessibility is its strength, but dismissing core tool gaps as irrelevant to pros undermines its growth. Class-A isn’t about cloning Alias—it’s about refining precision for workflows where ‘good enough’ costs time and trust. If Rhino wants to be more than a hobbyist’s sidekick, listening to those using it daily in professional trenches (and still hitting walls) matters. Bridging these gaps wouldn’t dilute Rhino it’d expand its reach without sacrificing what makes it great.
I’m disagreed about anything else is a niche of a niche, nice quality surfacing is a service searched by all automotive companies and many high end products, but is true not many have the skills or the knowledge since many users of Rhino are doing a less demanding surface work.
But I’m glad it fully serves you
They’ve been listening to users since 1995. It’s never been “a hobbyist’s sidekick”, and in the only actual real head-to-head 3rd party productivity testing done it ran circles around Alias.
Don’t try to pretend you’re some sort of “higher end” user than me, kid.
Do you think you’re the first in almost 30 years now to be like “I am PRO and use PRO tools and Rhino be PRO when it have feature X Y Z just like PRO tool?” It’s just funny. It’s all already on the wishlist, thanks.
I can’t agree more with @JimCarruthers
1 Rhino is a professional tools
2 it’s really precise if you know what you’re doing
3 fillet aren’t fast like in parametric software but can save your life.
Alias? I’m not using it anymore since the '90s but looking at YouTube how many clicks you need just to trim a surface or to “clean” control point I would remain with Rhino. As freelance I can’t afford a iper-expensive software that slow down my work so much.
I detect hostility in your response. This is simply a wishlist to improve our beloved Rhino’s surface-modeling capabilities. Rhino’s age doesn’t justify neglecting today’s surfacing needs just as calling a colleague “kid” doesn’t excuse dismissing their expertise. Treating valid criticism as pretension feels like arrogance, not expertise. Professionals aren’t asking for trophies; they’re asking for tools that make their work efficient.
Rhino is used in professional environments depending on where you are working.
I’m an automotive designer, and many people use it exclusively for Grasshopper, since it came out before Dynamo.
t can be a very precise tool, depending on the industry you are working in.
I agree — Rhino has decent filleting capabilities, but in my experience, clients are very specific about fillet settings, control points (CVs), construction methods, chordal, radial…
Having more advanced control over these specific aspects would be a great improvement in Rhino.
For me, it’s the other way around: Rhino was actually the first CAD software I ever used. I started working in automotive and aviation industries.
Since I developed decent skills with Rhino, I later moved into projects where I had to use Alias. (I’ve been using Rhino for over 10 years and Alias for around 3–4 years.)
Now, I have become much faster with Alias for the type of work I do, and it’s also what clients are currently asking for. I used the latest version never seen a 90s alias
But it really depends on what you do.
At the moment, I mostly design car exteriors and interiors, so my perspective is more focused on the needs of automotive and aviation design.
noticed it’s increasingly popular among hobbyists that is a market for many other paid cad sofwares loke fusion or modo… While professionals are exploring newer tools like Plasticity aswell and big companies. This shift suggests Rhino could risk being overshadowed in certain sectors. Nonetheless, focusing on surfacing enhancements could help maintain its professional relevance.This is my observation at least in my sector.
It was a genuine question because it looks similar to what AI produces i guess asking now is “critique” jesus…
But if you want to go that way fine how about a straight forward answer: i notice alot of patterns of a syndrome with users that go in the likes of “why is Rhino not like this software nag nag nag” and then you look at their aprouch to their modelling skills and dilemmas they encounter which looks absolutely atrocious that not even jesus Christ himself will touch.
By the end of the day Rhino is Rhino if you suck at it it’s on you and not the software, get better.
There is that “vibe critique” you are looking for.
And for the record saying that the software is just a “hobbyist sidekick” is quite insulting for the decades of work put into it.
Insulting really? What kind of community is this one… I don’t know what is vibe critique, but can only see bad vibes in this replies… My intention too create a wishing list for surfacing not a fight
@fuzz_face It would work better if you can give an example for each individual tool why it is important to you. It might be totally clear for you as an Alias user what these tools do, but not so much for an eventual developer that wants to work on this.
Just stating “Make Rhino more like Alias” is not going to bring this any further.
Thanks for your comment. You’re right not many people are familiar with some of the Alias workflows I’m missing and with what I wrote I’m taking too many thing for granted, which might explain part of the reaction. When I have more time, I’ll update it with more information and screenshots to make it clear.
Thanks!
I don’t know where you are getting this “hobbyist”info from, or if that is just an idea you have that has no real statistics behind it. At around $1K, Rhino is pretty expensive for “hobbyist” use. Most everybody that can plunk down that amount of money for software is a professional that uses the tool to earn their living.
There is a relatively small group of “hardcore” surfacing people on this forum and they have been pushing for improvements in the surfacing tools for a long time. Looks like some new stuff is coming for Rhino 9, which is great. But don’t expect miracles, because that sector is relatively small compared to something like AEC which represents 40% or more of Rhino’s users currently.
Not only product or car designers need better surfacing tools though. When we were showing the surfacing tools we’re working on to architects at Pininfarina, they were delighted.
@fuzz_face currently in Rhino WIP are these tools that are being worked on related to surface modeling:
FillSrf
Elmo (that hopefully eventually gets applied to surfaces)
Better UV editing tools (UV-style Gumball)
New Zebra
GlobalEdgeContinuity
SubDMatch
In general there will be more in-viewport widgets
btw I see a lot of potential for combining tools like EdgeSrf, Rebuild and FillSrf.
Currently it is already possible with some effort to create matching single span surfaces this way.
Maybe instead of hobbyists I should have used the word “makers” — it might sound more fitting for some. I’ve seen Rhino and Fusion used quite a lot in workshops and maker spaces, especially for 3D printing, laser cut and similar applications.
I paid around 12k euros per year for Alias, and some of my peers pay even more for ICEM. I have an old Rhino license myself, but I’d really like to see improvements in that area. Many demanding clients especially in the automotive and aerospace industries won’t accept surfaces that may be perfectly fine for other types of products.
Personally, I’ve been using a very old Rhino 5 license with vsr to do small things and recently tried Rhino 8. I’m actually really excited about what’s coming in Rhino 9 I hope in future to use it more and leave back Rhino 5. I saw the new FillSurface command and it feels like there are finally some real advancements in this area. Plus, there are some nice plugins emerging.
