McNeel is a small company, but Rhino is great software! I thought it was more widespread …
Rhino does not perform state-of-the-art fillet, or possesses the capabilities of a Parasolid kernel, but its performance, skills and speed of execution are the best I’ve ever seen!
When someone asks me: “Which software do you recommend for my work (architecture, design in general)?”, I always answer: “Rhinoceros!”… always…
Seeing is believing! and I’ve tried many software …
Oh I forgot: making users participate in software development is a great winning move. Software grows better if you use the intellectual resources of many and not the enlightened few. Every suggestion, wish, is well received …
You are a great little team! Beyond the criticisms that I often do to software (never destructive).
From a purely selfish vantage point, I’m glad Rhino isn’t as popular as some of the other fish in the pond. It means we can maintain our competitive advantage. I can honestly say that the success of this company over the last 17 years has a lot to do with our choice of software. We would not be doing a lot of the things we do if it wasn’t for Rhino.
„we use best scanning technics …“ . sounds indeed very reliable. I for myself would have asked the devellopers for statistical data. But even if numbers are realistic, what does it tell you? Seems to me that McNeel is a happy company with very enthusiastic employees and a great community. I don‘t get why some people (or software) always have to be the greatest of all. If you can life good from you passion, you did everything right. Greed is the evil of mankind.
What’s also interesting to note here is that if the initial post appeared on the forums of any of the other companies listed in the survey, the post would likely have been immediately removed and the user censured or banned… Yet here, this thread has been allowed to continue with 168 entries over more than a year and the original poster is still here.
That’s another sign of success - open mindedness, community building, and no fear.
I understand the importance of the freedom of speech because I am former dissident from communist Poland. My Rhino posts are censored about twice a year, but they are not important posts. With one exception, all McNeel employees (including Bob McNeel) have been friendly and informative.
Rhino plugins are much worse than Rhino, maybe because there is not enough blunt talk their forums. I was practically driven out of the Flamingo forum for reporting lots of bugs.
Since you are an aficionado of freedom of speech - and presumably fairness and the rule of law - why not consider editing your title after a period of reflection? Something like:
Robert McNeel & Accociates is Great; Let’s Make it ‘Greater’
I would rather say that Robert McNeel & Accociates is better than Autodesk, because it provides better technical support. Great software company may be in decline due to piracy or aggressive marketing of larger competitors…
My philosophy is different than your philosophy. I enjoy criticism more than praise because I want to improve everything. If my employee spits in my face, he is probably not sensitive, but it does not mean that he is bad employee. Children and infantile adults crave praise. For example, infantile scientists crave Nobel Prizes. True adults crave criticism, not praise.
True. However, this is a community, and one of the unwritten rules of citizenship here is respect and politeness - even if the content of the entry is complaints or criticism, which are actually welcomed. It’s what makes this forum different from pretty much any other place on the net these days.
Plus, one simply stands a lot better chance of actually being heard if a comment - which may well contain legitimate points - doesn’t set off a firestorm of reaction because of its tone, leaving the important part behind in the dust…
Very true. Long ago the McNeel folks were more likely to respond if a feature request had a tone of anger or agitation, since they took it to mean they had actually mis-read user’s needs in a major way. Now they’ve developed a thicker skin. They’ve also heard a lot more angry whiners over the years.
The major problem at McNeel seems to be that they (correctly) put the “big brains” on projects that make a big difference for the user and take a lot of time and effort, but they - in their quest to remain small and what they think is efficient - don’t have any small or intermediate brains to clean up the incredibly annoying usability details and insufficiently developed features that the big brains create. In my opinion this has been true since they started Rhino.
It’s the old 80/20 rule at work: it takes 80% of the work to finish up the last 20% of the project. McNeel “doesn’t have the resources for it”. By choice.
Yes, but then I thought they were just initial problems of a very young software,
that surely would have been solved soon …
… I was wrong.
Don’t you think that ,this way, a part of the nice work of big brains may be wasted ?
I mean: developing nice features but not letting the users take full advantage of those features does not make much sense to me …
I think it’s a matter of balance … still, from a user’s point of view, it keeps feeling annoying …
Autodesk is the giant that offers edu programs that attempt to convince everyone they are cool and care about the growing maker sector while grabbing up small innovators and absorbing them into a freedom stifling, small innovator killing machine of massive seat licence cost or worse subscription costs that are outright insane.
When i got in to Rhino it was, for me, the “poor man’s Alias” as it i could never afford Alias, but I had a chance to afford Rhino and it offered a great toolset for the money spent. Autocad was an app that required you to install a hardware dongle because of how expensive it was… Not much has changed except they now make gateway apps with less features, and educational licensing that encourages the end user to try unreasonably costly solutions.
Autocad/Solidworks/Alias is fundamentally priced for enterprise and above businesses. If you are not that, they don’t care about you. Meaning this entire maker revolution … the disruptors and the like are working to replace them with lower cost solutions - just like what happened with the patent protected multi hundred thousand dollar 3D printers.
Autodesk is looking to react to threats to it’s bloated corporate existence, hence the moves they’ve made as of late… Good for them… I think some day they will need to rethink that business model again.
I think Rhino is positioned nicely to be a balance between compatible with a lot of things, able to build awesome nurbs designs through fabrication, and a value for a small artist/studio looking to change the world.
If you can afford autodesk stuff or think I’m crazy, more power to you… I love Rhino… They can keep up the great work!
i recently found this chart on thingiverse that talks about picking cad apps… I can’t take credit for it but it expresses well why I use Rhino … Enjoy!
Big business/enterprise practices are abhorrent.
And what’s worse is they put upward pressure on prices for a whole raft of luxury, pseudo luxury and even basic goods and services which further divides economic classes (while often exploiting ‘global economy’ & less developed populations to do it)
