So I know asking this on a Rhino forum will definitely prompt unbiased opinions
Basically I was just hired by a school furniture manufacturer as a creative director and the creative team does a lot of space planning. They are currently using a software called CET which is made for space planning and they render whith TwinMotion. They made a plugin for CET that includes all their hundreds of furniture options and colors. If you don’t know what CET is, you basically can make walls by dragging in a wall and it will drag in an extruded wall. Then you can add, say, a basic window or door by dragging it over a wall and playing around with a configuration box. There are no points or curves.
The issue is that the software is shit, but I am not sure if my beloved Rhino would excel in this. It may be too slow and tedious to build every wall from scratch and cut out and import/build all the windows and doors. The quality can be much much better but at the expense of triple the amount of time.
My main question is, can Rhino work with a sort of furniture library sort of like Chaos Cosmos -but with your own uploaded and textured models? Like if you are working with a team that uses the same 200 models over and over. How would you do it? Also, would you suggest just staying away from Rhino all together. I will attach an examples of what I did with CET and TwinMotion. (Keep in mind that texture mapping is the biggest pain with this software combo)
The short answer is that Rhino is a development platform to build specialized solutions exactly like CET…hell for all I know it’s built on Rhino!(I haven’t looked and don’t know anything about that market so probably not.) Now how much work would have to be done, is it really worth it, umm…that’s a more involved discussion.
Yeah, that’s a sort of tough question to answer. I work in architecture, and all our space planning is done in Revit. So working with walls is a piece of cake. Making specialized doors and windows is a little more complicated, but we have a general library of those items so it is manageable. I’m the only Rhino user in the office and I tend to use it for bespoke items to be imported into Revit and/or Twinmotion. To your point, day-in day-out editing of spaces would take longer as Rhino isn’t parametric. Rhino plus a BIM plugin like Visual ARQ might be what you are looking for. The issue I see is that Rhino’s native format isn’t widely adapted. Rhino can import a variety of file formats, but they generally won’t render correctly without some tweaking. Getting Rhino to work with an online catalog is probably something you’d need to hire a programmer for.
Sorry long post as I have been down this road so I just want to share some of my experiences.
Yes Rhino can work with a set of models. Though how do you want to do this? The simplest way is to import models from a directory. But that’s not how CET does it.
You would have to program a way for your team to do this that is managed across your enterprise. It might even come down to how the designer interacts with the objects placed.
Many years ago I built an architectural room modeler (arm) in Rhino that could be driven by excel and could instantly show you a bom and details of construction. It worked by drawing your floor plan for walls as a polyline, then you placed 2d symbols where you wanted your windows and doors to be, chose molding types and then hit build, arm would build the floor plan and send all details to excel.
You have many options but would have to hire programmers to make this work and it would have to be managed with a system that you workplace uses. I see that CET for the most part does this in an advanced way even scouring the web for updates to the manufactures web models and specifications. That’s doable in Rhino but you’re going to need lots of programming to get to that level. If you only need a basic level you can import or place models as they are or as blocks, or write a simple import script when you place a 2dsymbol, or choose models from a list box of models with names, or add them to the library tab in Rhino and drag and drop from there.
Now that you have your models all the information you need for your BOM is not there so you will have to create databases and have a person to keep them updated on pricing etc. Then you have to write a program or grasshopper script that manages all that.
Ok but what about material options on the models themselves? You’re going to have to program that as well since doing this manually would make it hard to update in your BOM. This could be done with a program/script or in Grasshopper. But the script needs to finally interact with the specs of that model and update that when a material change is done.
CET does all this for you.
What about 2d drawings? CET seems to work pretty well in this case where in Rhino you will have headaches trying to get many drawings out and keep them updated. I wouldn’t trust Rhino for 2d work if you need to print more than 10 pages per design bid.
I think for 80 to 90% of your work CET is the best choice because though Rhino is cheaper you would have to hire programmers to make it work the way CET does.
But where Rhino could work for you and in my view is superior is when you get the advanced job where the space planning has more variables than usual.
I would use Grasshopper and Honeybee to analyze the spaces and help place windows and doors this way you could do heat and lighting analysis. Help for green certification and just up the quality of the planning. For instance know where and when an overly exposed to light area is in the space and when it occurs over the years. I would use Grasshopper to manage traffic flow and shape the placement of elements.
1.You could start by making a simple room planner script that places models how you think is best for your team.
2.Try attaching data to your models in a variety of ways. Either via csv export or in Grasshopper.
Make sure you can update your database and keep track of them. You’ll need to associate data with models not that easy if it needs to be used by many people.
3.Create your 2d sheets with titles etc. and save as enterprise standard for your 2D-documentation.
This way you could test if Rhino live up to expectations and if it is really worth it.
Thankfully rhino works great with Twin so nothing to do there that you aren’t doing.
Brings us to material mapping in Twin. I think Rhino has great options for unwrapping uvs and materials that Twin sees thus it’s maybe better for interaction with Twin than CET. Twin pretty much is not great at mapping but it does have some control.
I feel your pain because I’ve used CET before in the past and it’s not a very pleasant experience. The only benefit to it as far as I could tell was the fact that it had those massive libraries of system furniture that made furniture layouts pretty easy to do.
In the architectural space I have made plenty of interior building renders using rhino which are of the same scale and scope as the example images you have here. I have several directories filled with pre-textured .obj files from different manufacturers that I have amassed over many years through specialized websites, and even deconstructing and exporting Revit families. It’s not particularly difficult to place these in a scene modeled in Rhino. It’s not as streamlined as CET, but it’s more flexible, particularly for modelling architectural elements. Over the years I have gotten really good at quickly modelling walls, windows, and doors in Rhino.
For 2D work if you need it you’ll need to do separate drawings unfortunately. However if you want to spend a little bit more money, getting VisualArq would give you a lot of options for solving these problems for you. You could take your basic furniture library and turn them into VisualArq objects using Grasshopper that could auto-populate the 2D elements for you when you place them in a scene. VisualArq would also handle the walls, ceilings, and windows in 2D and 3D for you as well.
I would be very careful in switching tools. It’s a great risk and it can indirectly cost the company a lot when enforcing a particular tech stack.
Ideally you design a good toolchain with interchangeable pieces. Therefore you need to standardize the data going in and out.
This would also allow your team members to pick their preferred apps. What others believe to be shit, might be gold for others. It can lead to a lot of frustration if you force others to transition to Rhino.
And honestly, from my own experience you can create these renderings in many ways. Many would stick to polygon modelers, because it allows them to better optimize and texture the scene. Others render only very basic scenes and do the rest in Photoshop.
So there is a lot of freedom to get such images.
