Man, I can only advice you to stop making such stupid statements. Even in the blessed USA, there are a lot of people do all sorts of shit for $1000, because of being poor. Not all of them are stupid, and there are hobbyists out there being very serious, without spending $1000 on software. Other than that I’m not talking against buying Rhino for hobby usage, I’m just saying that Fusion360 is a great software which you can use for free in non-commercial projects. It is wrong that they force you to pay for it. I have no idea why this is a bad thing at all.
3 year free US license? Misleading?
I do not consider myself a hobbyist, I am honest about my income level, and I do not believe in such software subscriptions, as stated in my original reply. And my original license was one year, not 3.
Other than that, it takes a while until they renew the license once you triggered it manually. During that period they make you believe you have to subscribe. But I managed it after quite a while last year. You should not test the pro version then, otherwise it gets more confusing. Its really hard to do. I already forget how I did it in detail, but you find help if you know that its possible. I’m located in Germany, so maybe there is a difference
I Do like the look and feel of Rhino, whereas when I tried Fusion I often got snagged with constraint requirements, which seem to be a double edged sword.
I’ve been using Rhino for over a year and am happy with it.
Or I can use both, yeah?
I think they both have advantages. For functional models, I believe its better to use a parametric modelling software like Fusion, for projects with strong emphasis on design, you rather go for a direct modelling software like Rhino. Other than that, the annual revenue statement is regarding the usage of Fusion in projects where you sell the outcome. I don’t sell my hobby projects, nor am I self-employed in that area. Meaning my annual revenue is €0, which qualifies me for the non-commercial license. My income is of course much higher than CA$1355 a year
I began 3D when I was 11, purely as a hobby. When the era of quad-core and SLI GPUs began, I had to give it up for nearly 10 years when I turned maybe 20(?) as a hobby, because I simply couldn’t keep up with the hardware anymore. It doesn’t seem much over the year, but when you need the instantaneous expenditure, even over a couple of months, of new hardware; that can be a serious detriment.
I know we live in the era of “stop eating avocado on toast”, but I would imagine there are plenty of people who take their hobby seriously, but can’t afford the upkeep for various reasons. Not plenty that companies or people should/would care, because there is always Blender. But like any art form, it’s great if even lowly hobbyists can access good tools. I understand though from a company perspective, that the amount of trust needed to allow people to do this at a discount may be just too distasteful. Not that I ever feel sorry for Autodesk. 
I agree that many hobbies certainly cost more. Seeing people getting started in audio production… wow, blows 3D out of the water for costs. And cars.
As far as income…I would not sleep at night, wondering if the Autodesk SWAT team might strike at 3 in the morning!! 
“Annual revenue is the total amount of money a company receives from normal business operations during a fiscal year or 12-month period. It may include income from sales of products and services, interest from investments and earnings from intangible assets , such as trademarks or intellectual capital”
“A hobbyist user must generate less than CA$1355 in annual revenue, using Autodesk Fusion for home-based, non-commercial design, manufacturing, and fabrication projects.”
This clearly says if you are using Fusion360 home-based and make almost no annual revenue with that software than there is no problem. Even if you own a business in that area, you can use it, because you can and should anyway differ in-between private things and your company.
I can only imagine that this becomes a problem if you are mixing private and commercial domains. E.g. using your companies PC for private projects. But even if this all is true, it is also not so easy for Autodesk to prove that you used their software for commercial applications. Sure large corporations have lots of power, but they are not your government. I think this is a very important mindset. Even if they sometimes make you feel like it is the case.
I feel that it was easier to buy a commercial license from Rhino and call it a day, rather than trying to hoodwink a developer into thinking I am not who I am (teacher, hobbyist, man of the cloth, etc.,etc.), as I sit in my dining room doing 3D guitar parts.
Last month, I lost my job due to poor business conditions in the commercial real estate sector. However, I had the opportunity to interview with several top firms in California. Surprisingly, many of these firms have either switched to Rhino or are planning a phased transition from SketchUp to Rhino. This development has me quite excited about potentially joining some of these forward-thinking companies.
The consensus among these firms seems to be:
1- Revit will remain the key software for BIM (Building Information Modeling).
2- AutoCAD and SketchUp, while still useful, are considered accessory tools to support the main BIM efforts. Firms are increasingly looking to replace them with Rhino to simplify their workflows and reduce subscription costs.
In my opinion, Rhino is fully prepared to eclipse SketchUp. However, when it comes to AutoCAD, Rhino still faces a few challenges:
1- Better sheet management (including printing, layout, and sheet set management) is needed.
2- Dynamic blocks and parametric capabilities are areas where Rhino could improve.
3- Enhancements in handling DWG imports, especially for stacked dimensions, would be beneficial.
Overall, I’m thrilled about the direction architects are taking, and Rhino’s role in shaping the industry. 
Hi Tay
It was my case three years ago. I lost the job as a designer due to the poor market conditions but I landed softly getting new job immediately as a computational designer. In short: Grasshopper saved me 
It only required moving from moderate to pro level and it took me +1 year, but it was worth the effort.
I work for the company from construction and manufacturing industry, hundreds of people in total. In more than 90% we have moved from AutoCAD and Inventor to Rhino.
I was visiting yesterday our production halls and I saw Rhino on every computer for, at least, to review the master files, which are created in Rhino and Gh (based on a scripts I make).
Almost, yes. One important thing where Rhino needs to (s)catch up is producing better 2d from 3d.
Sketchup Layout can do dwg export of sections/elevations with color/textures.
Efforts were made, but it’s not satisfactory yet.
Agreed to the other points.
How that’s nobody mentioning the lack of BOM in Rhino? I badly need this feature to be supported natively in Rhino and not via hacks.
i badly need to get any table in either with pdf import or directly from excel. dont expect anything anytime soon. first step is to overhaul text editor. wven pasting raster images of table from excel would be “solution” if only rhino pdf driver had slider to determine level of compression…
Music to my ears! I’ve been on a bit of a downer seeing TONS of Sketchup jobs and barely anything for Rhino. Rhino gigs do seem to win out on the “quality versus quantity”.
Not to dredge up an old discussion but Sketchup can/does get good results. There’s many good plugins as well. But Layout is sloooooooooooooooooooooow no matter what. I’ve watched a few hour-plus long webinars… I’ve seen how they use the squintbook… I mean scrapbook… not for me.
I’m one of those mythical hobbyists. I am evaluating Rhino3D after seeing frequent mention in Moi forums. That program was the gateway for me to Rhino. For whatever reason, the workflow is just so fast and intuitive for me. Grasshopper is fascinating and may be one of the huge points for me to buy it. I personally have given up on learning Blender. I had spent many weekends trying to figure it out, even had good paid courses. I ended up buying Alibre Design and got so productive quickly for side gigs for friends using a mix of it and then Moi. Blender does have CAD sketcher which is interesting, but still pretty limited. I just can’t wrap my head around the UI. Fusion 360 was an option at one point but it’s slow on my PC versus any of the other apps I mention. If I want to eventually make money and have flexibility, the cost is just not worth it. I try to stick to products I can own outright and run on my PC and not a browser. I rebuilt a design from one of my other apps in Rhino in pretty quick time, impressed me aside from fillet headaches. The official Rhino YouTube where they make things from sketches and the workflow is a huge draw for me and I suspect it’s a good way to get a foot in the door for Hobbyists. Alibre started doing a few things somewhat like that more recently and the uptick seems to be good, fusion’s price hike probably helps too.
I think there are enough of us here now to start the Rhino Guild of Mythical Hobbyists.
Hello Matthew,
similar path and same destination: savannah
Best regards
Bartle
