What stories can you share about using Rhino for Mac on your projects?

Are you using Rhino for Mac to get work done? What projects are you proud of? Please share. (Pictures always help!)

Echo echo echo (bump to disturb the crickets.) Anyone willing to share what they have done using Rhino for Mac?

Not ā€œworkā€, but hobby: I design RC model airplanes. This is a recent project, a dummy 3-cylinder Radial in 1/4 scale:

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And this is how it looks ā€œin the fleshā€:

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And this is the design of a 1/5 scale model of an obscure (Dutch :smile:) aircraft, the ā€œScheldemuschā€ ;

Max.

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Another example, the well known Tiger Moth:

And the result:

Max.

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What?! Thatā€™s not a rendering :slight_smile:

@maxz Thanks for sharing these projects!

Are you also a Rhino for Windows user? Were there times when you needed to (or even preferred to) go to Rhino for Windows (or any other software for that matter? If so, why?

Depends how you define ā€œRenderingā€ :wink: :smile:

And yes, in a distant past I dabbled with Rhino for Windows, but I only got serious after I bought my Mac.

Max.

Iā€™m attempting to redirect my career toward architectural modeling and rendering after years in construction and engineering. Rhino for Mac has become my main tool towards this end and I find this forum offers excellent insights and tips to help a novice. Iā€™ve moved to Maxwell Render for my visualizations and they seem to be a good fit even though Rhino for Mac doesnā€™t offer add ons as yet. Hereā€™s a few interior renderings.


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Check out Keyshot 5 for Mac, Iā€™ve found it really helpful. I used Maxwell a few years ago on PC but itā€™s been a while.

@tomrendo Nice! Thanks for posting these. What was your workflow like for going from Rhino for Mac to Maxwell? Did you go via Windows?

Hi Dan,

Iā€™ve been working on a couple of projects that I canā€™t share publicly due to confidentiality but I could send you a link privately. I think most of the problems Iā€™ve had were self created, poor choices during the first build of surfaces and a steep learning curve on continuous curves, rebuilding curves and the dreaded ā€˜join edgesā€™ where filleting things at a later date fell on its backside.

Itā€™s interesting that exporting from Rhino to Max is still a bit of a black art, I found .sat files to be a bit of a pain, .step files to be a little more forgiving and ultimately .fbx to be the best option but didnā€™t really want to have to resort to meshing the model.

I used to use Rhino 4 for PC a couple of companies ago and found it a perfect replacement for AutoCAD where I didnā€™t need many layouts, just detailed drawings form 3D models. Having come back to 3D design iā€™ve found Rhino 5 to be much improved (especially layouts based on evidence from colleagues using the PC version)

Rhino is as important as a pencil and paper when drafting ideas quickly!

Sorry I couldnā€™t be more descriptive with regard to the workload.

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I have been enjoying seeing the progress on the Mac side. I am a long time Mac and PC user. I prefer the Mac platform, but use PCā€™s as needed. I have a pretty solid computer background on the hardware and software side and Macs and PCs both. I used Autocad for many years as a professional furniture designer/maker and have scratch-built and operated various CNC machinery over the years. As you will see, I abandoned the AutoCAD platform when shifting professions and thanks to the rise of Rhino for Mac, have not looked back.

Many years ago, I had a career change and opened a jewelry store with my wife and started using Rhino on the PC. Specifically, I use the the jewelry design package Matrix. For those that donā€™t know, Matrix is a piece of software that overlays Rhino3d transforming the interface and adding massive amounts of jewelry design functionality. The Matrix package is only available on the PC platform. I have had professional training on this package and have made use of it for designing jewelry for my jewelry store. I use it a visual aid for my design process to get the look and a physical aid for generating measurements and material costs with the Matrix package. I also of course generate visuals for customer approval and marketing. I also use it to prep designs for CNC production.

I began trying the Rhino for Mac version near its original release out of curiosity, but at that early beta time it was too lacking in features/functionality to make professional use of. That has changed dramatically, as the ongoing updates keep delivering improvements. As any business owner looks to the future, I realized that I may have to take a serious look at the Mac version in the future, but I will continue that in a moment.

The next thing I knew, the future arrived! A nearby jewelry store which did CNC wax milling for jewelry purchased a 3D printer to produce their models. We have a cooperative relationship and I was able to test drive their printers and it did not take long to see the amazing change that 3D printing was about to cause.

At the same time I had been teaching myself more pure Rhino usage instead of relying on Matrix as much. Also, the Mac version of Rhino was starting to gain some parity with the PC version and I began some test drive usage of Rhino at home on the Mac.

Again, a bit of time passed and the future collided with me again. I purchased a 3D printer, not for work, but for home. I decided purchase it as a ā€œbeta test printerā€ to see how I adapted to and made use of my own 3d printer, before spending $75k on a professional jewelry printer for the store. OK, that previous sentence is only partly true. I just wanted one of the new hobby level filament 3d printers really badly! At home, I have a Mad Scientist-style garage bursting with hobbies! So with my Makergear M2 3D printer and Rhino for Mac at my side, I began designing and printing fun projects for home and hobby.

All is well with the world, Rhino for PC at work, Rhino for Mac at home. I was enjoying my Mac environment and the Rhino Mac betas were getting pretty good and decided to install it on the Mac I have at work. Now I was able to spend a little time tweaking home projects while at work. Next thing I knew I was testing and working with designs on both platforms. I would work on the PC in the back and then go up front and work on the Mac, switching computers to work on the same project several times a day. Initially, things were not as smooth as I hoped, but over time the betas have progressed until one dayā€¦it happened. I was doing something with Rhino on the Mac and it hit me mid-keystroke.

There are aspects of Rhino Mac that are BETTER than the PC version.

At that moment, things began to change for me. I tasted freedom. Finally I could let that PC go. The PC I have always kept for CAD use all these years. The last vestigial tail of the PC world that has refused to drop. I have been a multi platform user for 25+ years, but never by my own choice. I needed the PC to do my CAD work so I could make a living and now the clouds parted and I honestly got a little bit choked up.

Suffice it to say, I am waiting patiently for the first day I can purchase Rhino for Mac. Thank you to the Mac team at McNeel, thank you for allowing beta testing, thank you for creating a user friendly interface, thank you for all the learning resources, and thank you to upper management for looking past the fast buck and realizing the long game is where true profit awaits. I know this has been a long read, but I feel like it is the least I can do in exchange for all you have enabled me to do using your software.

Keep up the good work! You now have a customer for life.

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The workflow was very straightforward. I saved the model in the OBJ format and imported it into Maxwell. Iā€™m using the latest Mac version of Maxwell Render Learning Edition which only costs $100 and has no expiration time. I learned very early that itā€™s not a good idea to import the whole model at once because individual objects become jumbled in the Maxwell objects list and itā€™s difficult and time consuming to group similar objects and assign the same material. That was easily corrected by selecting the ā€˜groupsā€™ in Rhino that would have the same final material and exporting those as a single OBJ file. They would then appear at the end of the object list in Maxwell and be easily grouped and assigned the same material. This speeded up the workflow greatly. My models tend to be somewhat heavy because I typically ā€˜buildā€™ with arrays of individual objects rather than mapping with images of the materials. Think of brick walls or wood flooring as examples. As you would imagine, my models have many repetitive objects.

I am very pleased with the pairing of Rhino for Mac and Maxwell Render. I know V-Ray and Keyshot are other excellent and respected rendering apps, but Maxwell offers a great startup with the Learning Edition. Iā€™m starting to feel more comfortable with Rhino for Mac and am now trying to explore the many tools available. My thanks to all the real pros on this forum for the great input!

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I failed to give credit for many of the models that were dropped into my house model from the wonderful FlyingArchitecture web site. This site is dedicated to excellent free models and offers 3dm, 3ds and obj formats. To anyone who isnā€™t familiar with this site, I urge you to visit.

Hi all,

I run my own product design practice, I specialise in 3D printing Manufacturing, production, and technologies!

rhino for Mac has been a critical component of that practice, having helped me work on everything from masks, props, music videos, to prototypes for engineers, designing vases, jewellery, lampshades etc etc.

I was commissioned by pinterest a while back and designed these using Rhino

Pinterst Facebook album

Pinterest Blog RE: 2052

Currently my work is on display at the British Council and we have an Ultimaker 2 on display live printing my work for the next 3 months!

British Council

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@2052 Paul: thanks for the links to your project with Pinterest - I had no idea they have an interior design workshop!. The prints look great, btw.

Thank you @Ukktor for the kind words and the background story. It is very important that we know what you want to do with the Mac version and so we can work to make sure you can get your work done.

but over time the betas have progressed until one dayā€¦it happened. I was doing something with Rhino on the Mac and it hit me mid-keystroke.

This is really fascinating. I know exactly what you mean. I think the transition was gradual, but it did hit me in a similar way. It would nice to know what had changed! I suspect it was - at least for me - sometime around the time that full-screen, single-window modeling was added. The UI started to come together, I think, around that time. I donā€™t knowā€¦

There are aspects of Rhino Mac that are BETTER than the PC version.

This is great to hear. One of the features I love is the ability to use the versioning system built into OS X. I love being able to ā€œrewindā€ the state of the Rhino model and even copy and paste objects (deleted long ago) back into my current modelā€¦I donā€™t have to save off older versions ā€œjust in caseā€ there was something there that I wanted. Anyway, I could go on, but I am obviously and hopelessly biased :smile:

Thanks again

They didnā€™t! I hosted it for them! XD