I am a civil engineering graduate with 40+ years of experience in the infrastructure construction industry. I have two questions to ask the community:
It depends on the type of projects. Architectural modelling can mean a lot of things. Do you want to create construction documents with your completed model? Conceptual models?
Modelling something relatively small, maybe a small simple structure will give you an idea of whether or not Rhino fits the bill.
You’ve already used R7. I did upgrade to R8 and don’t regret it. But I would have been just fine with R7. R8 does have fairly big benefits when it comes to things like sections, line weights, etc… but the core stuff is pretty similar. R8’s controls are different in certain ways so it would take time to adjust. There’s various other little quirks that McNeel is fixing more and more as time goes by. Try out the free trial if you have the time then decide.
Thanks.