This society indeed exists and here is a proof!
My grand-grandfather made this photograph 120 years ago. Sorry for blacken the faces, but members of this society are in great danger today! Some of the people on the photo are still alive. For some weird reason, you occasionally find them on skateboards nowadays…
Interesting general discussion on Rhino uses. Unlike someone above who claims pre Version 1 users/testers left when the first commercial release made it’s debut, I immediately went and bought it. For 3D at the time it was very good value. Here in the UK Autodesk wanted £1000 for an IGES translator whilst Rhino was £300 with many more translators (Step,VDA, DXF etc) in there.
In 1995/6 I was in a design studio running a Silicon Graphics box and a 3D package called Varimetrix a solid/surface modeller. That lot cost around £20,000 and that is without any training or time spent learning.
There were almost no 3D hobbyists against those prices. Pro-E, Unigraphics, Catia etc were similar or more expensive. Not forgetting other packages such as Anvil 5000.
Linux with Kernel 2 onwards allowed quite a few 64 bit high end 3D software to migrate to the PC along with Win NT4 32 bit. This stuff was not cheap hobby CAD.
My main use of CAD is for almost anything being an Industrial designer. I’ve had a 4 metre boat CNC’d inside and out then wrapped in glass, injection mouled parts, lost wax parts, some architectural stuff, 3D printed stuff since the mid 90s’ too. Originally SLA prototypes but later with better materials working nylon and other parts.
In the UK quite a lot of naval architects use Rhino for projects along with various NA packages. A colleague helped out an architectural practice when the ‘Gherkin’ was being modelled as we could do it in Pro-E and Rhino but Microstation was unable to at the time…
Nominally I’m so called retired but I have a project in renewable energy which I am developing in Rhino. I think it is the best all round 3D package which has the versatility to give professional output currently around. It has just got better and better. I’m with the more engineering points above, would love better Datum, tolerance, hole table etc stuff. I had it 30 years ago in a cheap 2D package sadly no longer supported.
Recently I have helped out a local self builder simply translating DXF, DWG and flattening so called 2D drawings which were in fact on 6 levels and purging 900+ Blocks/Symbols which his system could only do one by one…The new V8 project Block to plane command came in useful. A couple of years ago I modelled and printed some parts for a handheld radio down at the local Sailing Club. Had to round trip some SolidWorks Assembly files for a commercial medical company less than a week ago. Rhino is definitely a pretty good tool for this range of work.
I’m simply a grateful customer with a myriad of uses, More strength to McNeel and all the staff there.
Please get behind the (re)quest for adding support for Tables in general in Rhino. BOM and RoomLegends both use tables which can autoupdate from BlockManager and Area’s of surfaces respectively. Both are needed for IndustrialDesign/manufacturing and InteriorDesign/facilitymanagement.
I do not think that Blender is not accurate enough for most real-world objects. Years ago, I once asked the Blender people to put CAD like abilities in Blender, but they would not hear of it. There was an external toolset, but I lost track of it.
As for Autodesk, Fusion360’s is bait-and-switchware. Though, there is indeed a reason why I had asked for a cheap/free CNC solution in Rhino.
and them too. What would an entry level CNC package for Rhino look like?
I suspect that difficult to adjust a line where features are included VS 3rd party vendors who support Rhino will be protected from competition from McNeel.
Hi @Brenda
Thanks for linking that older CNC thread.
I did go on from there to write and release KaroroCAM:
A light weight, fast, low cost and cross platform CNC solution running inside of Rhino.
I specifically wrote KaroroCAM to replace Fusion360 in my own workflow.
Cheers
DK
Might be time to revisit that subject
How does one model in Blender regarding draft angles, etc. and around imported supplier components that the design needs to match to?
How do the engineers and toolmaking engineers that receive an industrial designer’s polygon mesh data, created in Blender, continue working with it in Creo, SolidWorks, or Fusion?
Hi @Lagom
It’s mostly a pain even with addons. The attached video is for cad sketcher in Blender. The very things you are asking for can be done but needs a different mind set and work flow. I tend to just stay in Rhino. Compare the video to how easy it is to make this part in Rhino.
But I do love blender for hard surface modeling of fantasy objects and to finish off or detail rhino models, the non destructive workflow with booleans is really awesome.
CAD Sketcher VS Precision Modeling In Blender 3.2
RM
All other arguments aside,
The precision issue is a problem which I never fully understood. I have heard it 15 years ago while being in university and obviously it seems still to be present today.
Almost any application is using floating point arithmetic. And even single-float based applications might use higher floating precision on certain computations.
In practice nobody needs the precision of the entire single-float decimal range. Even in automotive, where I work, it never went below a 1/1000 of a mm. Thus, precision is very much based on the modeling technique.
Since day one, in Blender you can perform any modeling step by typing values in. So in-theory you can work precisely in Blender.
But this does not make it an engineering application in what most people understand as CAD stands for. For myself, it might be a translation issue. But I’m pretty sure that “Design” in CAD is not meant artistic.
Blender is originated as a 3d modeler for computer graphics. Games, VFX, Rendering etc. and therefore has entirely different use-case. But depending on what someone needs to do, it might also works with Blender. And sometimes art and engineering is so close related, that it’s a better choice to solve technical problems with a brush…
But Blender lacks plenty of technical tooling. Even with addons it’s unlikely that it becomes a usable CAD platform.
Using parametric surfaces over polygons is an important feature alone. So why would someone use it for engineering???
But yes, maybe Rhino looses architects to Blender. But what could you do? The solution is not BIM/BOM/BIMMIDIBONG
Well, maybe, just maybe, the developers could address the plethora of missing features and bugs, because, uh… " Rhinoceros - NURBS Modeling for Windows" 
Sure, or early stage design concepts, no doubt, just like with Maya or 3DS Max, etc., but that has little to do with 3D modelling industrial designs for tier 1 and tier 2 businesses. You can’t even do basic sheet metal construction or a contact analysis with imported parts in polygon based software, and your Creo, SolidWorks, or Fusion colleagues in engineering can do nothing productive with your polygon data.
Well said
Hi @Lagom
My dear fellow I’m agreeing with you. I said blender is not good for precision modeling or did all that pass you by? Also I shared a video where it shows how hard it is in blender to make semi precision parts compared to rhino using an addon. As you point out none of what you write is achievable in Blender.
But and I must say this, Blender’s hard surface modeling is really great much better than rhinos if you’re making fantasy objects or prototypes etc. Booleans, filleting, beveling, texturing, animating, making a prototype is much easier and more robust than rhino and if you really wanted to you could 3dprint the stuff. In this world we must know many things well not only one thing.
RM
The issue was
where I am highly doubtful whether there are any “CAD like abilities in Blender” that have design implementation utility value for industrial designers. That’s all.
But can you do it effectively in Rhino without having to export to one of those “solid modelers”?
The topic was revisited, and the conclusion remained the same: it’s still not functional enough to be truly useful. My goal was to spark discussion—and that part definitely succeeded.
Fine for 3d printed parts, but so long as blender can only export a mesh you can’t really do mass manufacture (injection molding etc.) with mesh files.
FWIW I spent 5yrs exporting dxf files directly from rhino for laser cutting and bending sheet metal up to 3mm thick. All designs were done in 3D in rhino respecting material thickness and radii, flattened then exported, never had a problem, but, our guy doing the bending and cutting had shown us what he needed as a file. We once sent files to another company that had their own bending software and they couldn’t use our files straight off, they had to rework them. All this was over 8 years ago so may not be particularly relevant… 
As a transportation designer, Plasticity is catching up. But still, if I need to make surfaces for a car today, I use Rhino. This is a gem for 3D enthusiasts!
Architecture is dead… mostly due to being too frugal when it comes to investing in software bc their marginal are too tight. Autodesk dominates the AEC landscape. And it will all always because of mediocrity.
However, the real money is squarely in the hands of fabricators and builders. Rhino should be developing tools to satisfy these needs (as they are). This portion of the market is the fastest growing and solid models as popular as they are still need a rhino sibling to help bridge the gap or become an assembly viewer. (and please, please better architectural navigation walk tools!)
Rhino does exist in most architecture offices, especially at the upper echelon’s of design. However, I’m tired of getting requests to send our models in rhino 7. Or even rhino 6. The cost of the upgrade is reasonable. The only reason it’s not done is because firms have to have people justify it because it’s not a renewal expense that must happen every year.
I really wish that rhino adoption would happen faster. We often let our clients know I think you can download and use it for free to view models.
I wonder if a low cost subscription model should be introduced that would naturally allow architecture firms to keep the upgrades coming without personnel justifying the upgrade.
Also, blender is great for power users and people who don’t care for an organized like-minded community like ours. In AEc no-one who works in blender exclusively works in blender. Except for hobbyists. Architecture always has and will be a multi software practice. That being said, I did see blender pulling out ahead pre-AI. Now rhinoscripting is far more easier in some ways than even grasshopper blender is losing some fans.
