Rhino not using GPU

[gdigiro]

@stevebaer

Rhino 8 assumes you have a working GPU which is why some things like linetypes and hatches are not appearing. We have built in fallbacks over the years to support situations where lower level OpenGL is needed to be used. Linetypes and hatches were rewritten with regards to display in Rhino 8 and we would need to add fallbacks to try and get geometry like this to show up on your screen

Thanks Steve!

[stevebaer]

We will add fallbacks, but remember that with no GPU at all there are many things in Rhino that we just can not draw at all.

[jim]

@David53

I’d drop onto Ebay or whatever and buy myself out of the problem.

Any old and functional nvidia 10 series (GT 1030, GTX 1080) may permit an escape to this. Even a GTX 1050 or a 1080. They are practically e-waste now. A GTX 1050 doesn’t even need a power cable.

Yeah really…
To me this is the thing that is completely beyond comprehension to me.

Why doesn’t McNeel tell people they don’t need the latest and greatest hardware to make Rhino run adequately?
Why are they so diligently and persistently misleading people about what are the minimum requirements for making Rhino work?

If Rhino developers and promoters were at all competent, they would tell people that in order to get Rhino to run and make good geometry all you need is to buy a machine that runs Win10 and include good 6-7 year old good video card. A person can buy a desktop machine on Ebay (with a cheap monitor) for around $200 that will run Rhino just fine.

They could also buy just the video card alone for as little as $20 if that is all they needed.

Why is McNeel not making any effort to let users know these facts???
Its as if McNeel and its devotees were somehow benefiting if the user brought expensive hardware.

I know that someone will now think that what Rhino tells people are not the minimum requirement but the recommended requirements`.

I know what the recommended requirements are. One of the question I ask is why does McNeel and its sycophants always tell user who are asking about minimum requirements what the recommended requirements are, which is a completely misleading answer to the question.

[David53 (David)]

I guess one of the problems is… how many problems there are.

One of the advantages of Rhino turns rapidly into a major disadvantage perhaps. With all of its flexibility to accept all kinds of plug-ins, and extras, maybe they feel they just don’t have the time to support particular configurations or projects that users need.

My recommendation above, for example, would fall flat on its face if you tried even medium rendering with a few good high-res textures, as the GPU would immediately run out of VRAM.

In the spirit of the thread featuring all sorts of nvidia GPUs, maybe someone could make more of a community-driven “Unofficial Rhino Hardware” guide. And I mean guide, not a guarantee. It avoids the official need for support for different users, but can temper expectations for other things like rendering. It doesn’t even need to be precise, just to give a flavour of reasonable expectation around hardware.

On the flip side, I am reminded of one joke made by one Jeremy Clarkson in the UK was about the low speed limit on UK motorways, and that we are all constrained by some guy who insists on using his Ford Anglia as a daily driver, preventing us all from moving on.

I suppose to be balanced, given we (communal we) are often crying out for McNeel to update things like the lost VSR tools, broken booleans, bad blending, terrible filleting, they may end up in a massive rut if they are trying to support people who still are trying to use 1-GB iGPUs from 2010 with Rhino 8. Autodesk would just tell you to get…well… you know. Even Blender has a minimum requirement of hardware less than 10 years old now, and 2 GB VRAM.

This topic is quite interesting, as the user is essentially backed into a corner, which by all accounts, shouldn’t even exist. We know it does work, but shouldn’t really. The question of whether it should be supported… I don’t know. If it’s easy (driver) or very cheap (old GPU) to solve, sure! But then the question arises as to whether a responsible company rep should provide advice to purchase used or legacy hardware. Even on Microsoft and Intel forums, that tends to be a community-driven murky area.

[gdigiro]

@stevebaer

We will add fallbacks, but remember that with no GPU at all there are many things in Rhino that we just can not draw at all.

Thanks again Steve!

[stevebaer]

@gdigiro the latest 8.14 release candidate should display hatches with low level OpenGL settings.

You can get the release candidate by following instructions here

Rhino Service Release Candidates

Service Releases fix bugs, improve stability, and add SDK features for programmers. We will release Service Release Candidates frequently so you can give feedback. You must have a valid license for Rhino in order to get Service Release Candidate builds. BETA releases will not update to release candidates. To subscribe to Service Release Candidates, follow the platform-specific instructions below. Rhino for Windows Start Rhino From the Tools menu, click Options In the Options dialog box, c…

[gdigiro]

Thanks very much Steve,
Right now the hatch run normal.

Only one detail:
My system shows that I have OpenGL 3.1 but Rhino V8.14 shows only the Version 1.1…like before.
Regards,
Giovanni

[gdigiro]

Hi Steve,
Technical View has still has a issue as show in the Solid Cubic Screen Pic:

Thanks in advance for you great effort,
Giovanni

[stevebaer]

@gdigiro

My system shows that I have OpenGL 3.1 but Rhino V8.14 shows only the Version 1.1…like before.

From your previous screenshots, this looks to be the case in Rhino 7 as well. The Intel 2000 is a very old and underpowered GPU. Even if it advertises as supporting OpenGL 3.1, it is very unlikely that it actually will support 3.1 without crashing.

[gdigiro]

I understand.
When I get a new computer I will be able to enjoy the graphical achievements of Rhino 8 but for now I can only settle for simple images that achieve the curves, hatches, surfaces and solids I want with calculations included as is the case with this old program that I own and works wonderfully well.
Thank you for your great effort!

[gdigiro]

Hi Steve,
Any Chance to fix in my GPU as you fix the Hatches?
1.- Technical view,

2.-Perspective View for normal mouse.
When I want to rotate the model, a strange behavior occurs and it does not obey what I want to see. This does not happen in my old Rhino 4 version.

Thanks very much in advance!

[CADARTZ]

My specs may be interesting for this topic this pc is from 2011 with a gpu from 2018 that is the “newest” thing in it runs windows 10 and Rhino 8 without issues i did make sure to update everything aswell

Rhino 8 SR19 2025-5-12 (Rhino 8, 8.19.25132.01001, Git hash:master @ 57e3eb280b0f32cbe59f53a554be5e8ffa66fc36)
License type: Educational, build 2025-05-12
License details: Cloud Zoo

Windows 10 (10.0.19045 SR0.0) or greater (Physical RAM: 32GB)
.NET 7.0.0

Computer platform: DESKTOP

Standard graphics configuration.
Primary display and OpenGL: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (NVidia) Memory: 8GB, Driver date: 4-12-2025 (M-D-Y). OpenGL Ver: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 576.02

Accelerated graphics device with 4 adapter port(s)

• Windows Main Display attached to adapter port #0

OpenGL Settings
Safe mode: Off
Use accelerated hardware modes: On
GPU Tessellation is: On
Redraw scene when viewports are exposed: On
Graphics level being used: OpenGL 4.6 (primary GPU’s maximum)

Anti-alias mode: 8x
Mip Map Filtering: Linear
Anisotropic Filtering Mode: High

Vendor Name: NVIDIA Corporation
Render version: 4.6
Shading Language: 4.60 NVIDIA
Driver Date: 4-12-2025
Driver Version: 32.0.15.7602
Maximum Texture size: 32768 x 32768
Z-Buffer depth: 24 bits
Maximum Viewport size: 32768 x 32768
Total Video Memory: 8 GB

Rhino plugins that do not ship with Rhino

Rhino plugins that ship with Rhino
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Commands.rhp “Commands” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\WebBrowser.rhp “WebBrowser”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk.rhp “Renderer Development Kit”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRenderCycles.rhp “Rhino Render” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoRender.rhp “Legacy Rhino Render”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\rdk_etoui.rhp “RDK_EtoUI” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\NamedSnapshots.rhp “Snapshots”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\MeshCommands.rhp “MeshCommands” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\RhinoCycles.rhp “RhinoCycles” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Toolbars\Toolbars.rhp “Toolbars” 8.19.25132.1001
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\3dxrhino.rhp “3Dconnexion 3D Mouse”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\Displacement.rhp “Displacement”
C:\Program Files\Rhino 8\Plug-ins\SectionTools.rhp “SectionTools”