What do you expect to see in V7 before it’s ship-ready?

Serengeti (Rhino WIP)
47
  • Native Dark Mode support in Windows 10.
  • Robustness of what little history there is in Rhino (another example here).
  • Proper object hierarchy panel so working with what Rhino weirdly calls “Blocks” is actually feasible (since 100% of all CAD software with assembly support works well with this, including Alias, but in Rhino it’s a nightmare).
  • Edit support added from the FilletEdge command to the FilletSrf command (and ideally same with Blends… additionally tension from BlendCrv would be nice to get in BlendSrf… basically, parity between all blend and fillet commands).

Ok, I’ll stop now, because from what I read in this forum, I honestly don’t expect to see anything of what I wrote in V7 (or even V8 for that matter). Maybe if they double the price of the software? :slight_smile:

48

Oh, I have to say, the Subd is amazing, and a guarantee upgrade from our side. I’m sitting here modeling in Blender, importing to Rhino, and then exporting to Solidworks for CNC machining… it’s insane how easy it is and we recouped the cost of 2 floating Rhino licenses in the matter of days.

1 Like
49

@cardib Who is the competition?

2 Likes
50

:thinking: That is kind of a question to you Bob. Who do you consider a competition?
On a technical point of view it’s the functionalities of the software. Not the software as a whole.

  • Bongo - CATIA, Blender, and plenty of game engines that do better.
  • Rhino surface modeller, CATIA pretty close race, my recent observation Rhino got the lead since Rhino6, before that CATIAv5 was in the lead. DS screwed up big time with CATIAv6.
  • Rendering… RhinoRender is very bad. Raytraced is an infant. Flamingo (I have never tested it), still BlenderCycles, Vray, etc. are superior to Rhino.
  • GH - that is no doubt the best, but hopefully GH2 will come up with some improvements because xGen of DS is picking up speed.
  • Rhino solid modeling - non existent. Crashed by Inventor, Solidworks, Catia, even FreeCAD.
  • Rhino Block management - terrible. crashed by Autodesk functionalities.
  • Rhino Drawing capabilities - terrible, we can see improvements but they are slow.
  • SubD is something that will pull Rhino up but… When is it coming?

to name a few.

UPDATE:
I do consider python integration the best thing that happened to Rhino in the past decade (or more).
Rhino.inside, Rhino3dm, RhinoCompute are things I am still trying to figure out a way to use. I like the idea, though so far no use case.

Price and Public API is the best feature for me. As I don’t use Rhino much in my work. Mainly for me learning programming and solving 3d modelling puzzles.

51

@ivelin.peychev It sounds like you need CATIA.

We are a tiny company with less than 100 people. You are really expecting us to compete at the same level as a company with more than 16,000???

Cycles is coming in Rhino 7. Give it a try. There is still work to do but we share the core code. It mostly a matter of getting all of UI working.

Who promised you solids modeling? There are plenty of solids modeler out there at every price point. Does the world really need another?

BTW, you forgot BIM.

Yes. Yes. We have a bunch of things to work on. Currently, the list is just under 10,000 issue that we are tracking. BTW, most of them won’t get fixed in Rhino 7.

13 Likes
52

:slight_smile: I do work with catia and argue with DS tech support and R&D all the time.

I also very well know McNeel is a small company, and defended you with that same argument. Especially when people whine about small commands missing (but API exists). I promote implementing these functionalities with scripts.

You simply triggered me with your question. As I said, it is a question for you not us.
We can only comment on the technical stuff, which is what I did.
What do YOU want Rhino to be? Then we can target our complains better to improve that part of Rhino with our combined knowledge of all the disciplines we come from.

53

I was just trying to figure out how Rhino was a CATIA competitor.

For products like that, we feel like we are doing well if we just have one minor thing that we can do for CATIA users to enhance their day from time to time… and make them delight to pay us.

We don’t expect to replace any of those products. There might be others but I’m not sure who they are. That was why I was asking.

54

My honest opinion as a naval architect working with CATIAv6 (3DExperience).
You can replace them. It’s a matter of industry research and hiring 10-20 more programmers and QA specialists. :wink:

DS are targeting huge clients, the small and mid size companies are there to be taken over by Rhino7 (8?).

1 Like
55

Adding to the list: for DupBorder, DupFaceBorder and CurveBoolean: an option within the command that does the same thing as SimplifyCurve. And make the option sticky so whether I choose yes or no, it becomes the current default.

56

After reading this thread I was considering buying a a few seats of Catia. We talked it over at a Fresco and we decided that instead we are going to use that money to buy a commercial property for the business, because we don’t like the subscription model ‘on hardware’.

We are not there to buy an entire building but if we save for as many Catia licenses as we would need for our users, we can then definitely NOT buy Catia and buy a building for sure.

So we are stuck in Rhino for another decade at least, and I think it might make us enough profit to then revisit after those 10 years if we can afford to buy Catia then, or if then we instead buy another building. After all, we have offices in two locations so going ‘hardware subscription free’ in both would be nice.

So… I need more Rhino license now, because those Catia licenses (or buildings) need to be paid from somewhere.

Question:

Should I buy 2 more Rhino/Bongo seats now? Or should I wait until September/October when Rhino 7 and Bonge 3 are out?

Thanks,

G

7 Likes
57

:rofl::rofl::rofl: :+1:

58

Which September/October? :slight_smile:

9 Likes
59

That seems to be the story for the last half a decade or more, if I understand things correctly. Serious question, what is preventing your from doubling your price in order to attempt to get through that list a bit faster? From what I can tell, even with double the Rhino price, you’re still far, far cheaper than your closest competitors (and @ivelin.peychev forgot to mention Alias, btw, which is way closer in functionality to Rhino than the monster that is Catia, and we use both at work).

I mentioned in another thread that we managed to recoup the cost of 2 Rhino licenses in the matter of days, and that’s honestly almost a bit silly.

3 Likes
60

Keep in mind that twice as many is not twice as fast. Just as with a CPU, it is only a few select procesesses that are scalable with the amount of cores you have. Like “simple” tasks as calculating pixels in an image when rendering :wink:

61

Try to tell that to the Blender Foundation. :wink:

1 Like
62

Nothing silly about that. We like the price. A lot. Especially since it comes with unlimited complaining rights.

If I posted anything like I do here in a different product’s discussion group I would get banned on week 1.

G

3 Likes
63

I’ve been riding Autodesk’s ass in their Alias forums since 2010, and my account still haven’t been banned…

Autodesk simply removed Alias from our subscription package a few years back, and it was a bit surprising to see how few people got angry and complained about that on their forums. They probably did the math on that ahead of time, though, so that’s why I’m curious about the way Rhino does business.

2 Likes
64

McNeel probably sells more licenses in a month than Autodesk has worldwide installed base of Alias users. Alias is an old play for old people and old business models. I know because that’s why I learned in the 90’s and it hasn’t revolved much since then. I knew a reseller of a very large US region, he had told me that they would sell 1-2 licenses a year. It was not worth their time. Also last I heard Alias has 2 active developers in their whole team.

It’s not a mystery how McNeel stays in business. Also it’s not a mystery that Alias stays around just for old cats in automotive studios’ basements. That user base in going only one way: retirement homes.

4 Likes
65

I only hope your employees like their salaries.

1 Like
66

well, I don’t think you realize that you are pointing out that the lower our equipment and other fixed costs, the more room we have to pay above market compensation, so we can attract and retain the best talent.

I know our team is very happy with the compensation and with the work, and it’s not by accident. Our best asset is people, and that’s what we nurture the most.

Let’s do some numbers: If I calculate the cost of a Rhino+Bongo license, plus expected upgrades and divide it on a monthly basis, the total costs is roughly $50/month/user. Probably even less if you owned the licenses for longer (I’ve bought most of them in the last 1.5 years). Even if I calculate all the pieces of software + services combined that we use, I’m looking at about $315/month/user all in. This is the breakdown (drawing numbers from memory, might not be exact):

Basecamp 10
Dropbox 25
MS Office 35
Adobe CC 70
Snagit 5
Rhino 40
Bongo 10
Modo 50
Octane 20
Vray 30
Fusion360 20
Unreal 0
Cura 0
Preform 0

For contrast, we like the idea of adding Siemens NX to our tools (it does very nice things), but at $550/month/user it just doesn’t make much business sense if we stay with our current work/clients. If having that new/fancy tool would bring us some other lines of work (additional work that allows us to grow above and beyond what we are already doing organically without such tool), I’ll consider it. But it’s hard to make the case of just opening the checkbook for it otherwise.

This is similar to my semi-joking but fully business-sound idea of considering buying real estate instead of Catia seats. This is something that large CAD companies just don’t seem to understand. Or at least they pretend they don’t.

Even in more design-centric workflows, when people tell me that they use Alias, or Vred, or any of those fancy things, especially in design consulting studios, I just cannot comprehend it. I know what those tools do (I used them). And know what our tools do (in our expert hands). The 10-20X cost differential just makes no sense. No sense at all.

I’m sure a company that does complex engineering/analysis/etc would make the opposing argument that mine, but for people like us doing industrial design/strategy/visualization work, Rhino + Modo and all the other little software to grease their wheels is all we need to do great work, and make good money for all of us.

Even if we get to bitch about fillets here and there, it’s a good life, we are blessed af.

Best,

G

PS: tomorrow is Monday, I’ll be back at complaining. You guys have me too soft this week for some reason. We need to rectify that.

6 Likes