For Owners of v4,5,6 who have not upgraded to v7 yet-
We have all seen by now, V7 is the single biggest and most advanced update of Rhino since its creation.
I’m in the process of compiling a list of v7 topics for which I’ll make videos.
I’m curious, what are you reasons for not upgrading?
Your answers will help influence what topics I cover first- (and possibly future development efforts for upcoming releases)
thanks for your input!
-Kyle
I’ve been using V7 since it was a WIP. Several reasons I’ve heard from users who have not upgraded are:
Cost - Their current version of Rhino does what they need and they don’t need the new features. SubD is not relevant or necessary.
New versions always have problems. The forum has lots of posts about problems with V7.
An important plug-in does not/may not work with V7.
Installing V7 means V6 will have to be removed. While this is not true it is believed by some users.
thanks- Indeed it’s not true that old version have to be removed.
I have rhino 4,5,6,7 and wip 8 all installed side by side on my machine here.
Not a common perspective (I am an exception being on the spectrum), but I am very sensitive to UI creep as features get added. The package starts loosing it’s original (v1, v2) simplicity and lightweightness.
I upgraded from v5 (only a couple months ago) to support McNeel as a company and to access some newer plugins. Sometimes I wish heretical un-Rhino like features like the Gumball could be unloaded like a plugin so I never have to see it laying around polluting the purity of my Rhino.
Thanks for your input!
For me… It’s a balance between the OS version and other legacy software.
I have a couple of programs FontLab Studio 5 in particular that won’t run if I upgrade my OS… and I can’t install the latest version of Rhino unless I do upgrade the OS.
At this point, in the not so distant future. . . my fondness of Rhino will outweigh my fondness for FLS5, and I’ll be making the change when I can.
You can disable the gumball
Yes, I know.
I’m an employee, using what the company gives me.
( … Well, actually I’m using my NFR licence because the company only would give a cracked Rhino … but that’s OT …)
But I think I can mention a couple of reasons why old users would not upgrade.
( Besides the usual plug-in compatibility problem, that affects a lot of users,
and in my opinion is a very important reason why people don’t upgrade )
Yes, about free-form modeling, which, I know, is Rhino’s core business.
Fine.
But when Rhino appeared it was more balanced, so to speak.
Several peole, mostly small and very small companies, bought Rhino to use it as a low cost MCAD.
And MCAD feature have not improved much in the following versions, if at all …
Another thing I’d like to mention, from a personal point of view, is what I’d call impredictability of Rhino commands evolution.
Often in a new version an old command changes, sometimes in a way that makes it useless for me.
Examples are ConnectSrf that I used a lot in Rhino 4, but was unable to use since Rhino 5.
Then in Rhino 6 ExtendSrf became half-broken, and still is, making me struggle every day to work around its problems …
Not to mention a minor difference in FilletEdge.
I’d like to know why, when a command is heavily modified, the old versions is not kept accessible in some way (when possible) …
Thanks
Personally, I’m still sticking with V5 because the new SubD in V7 is not good enough that T-Spline does
: Appen Tool, match SubD with a curve, assign Keyboard shortcuts, extrude polygon, and the handling Move, Scale, Rotate in Tspline so good, etc.
Rhino 7 is good but I’d see the new Rhino 8, maybe they will improve the SubD workflow.
Using Rhino as a low-cost MCAD was never a compelling idea, unless you’re doing something very specialized where Rhino’s flexibility made it useful as the platform for custom solutions, and more options for low-cost basic MCAD exist now.
Actually posting the issues you are having would be a good idea, those specific things are news to me.
Still Rhino vendors were happy to sell it to those companies …I’m talking about 20 years ago … maybe still they are … 
I was just trying to say what happens, not to advise people to use or not use Rhino for some kind of work.
If what I said is OT here, I take it back, sorry.
I’m using Rhino 6.
Talking about its problems doesn’t make sense any more …
But I remember that changing ConnectSrf in Rhino 5 was a choice from McNeel.
I think there is (and there was) no point in complaining … maybe that was discussed on the NG/forum then, but I don’t remember (Darn … I’m gettin old. I forget about a lot of things …) 
ExtendSrf’s problems sure have been discussed on the forum when Rhino 6 appeared.
Not sure if that has been fixed in Rhino 7.
I think it’s been at least partially fixed now, but nothing was done for Rhino 6.
Again, I did not mean to complain, just to mention something that might make someone less sure about upgrading. 
I’m just a hobby user on a Mac. Will be waiting until a M1 native version is available.
I upgraded from Day one, then I had to downgrade and keep using Rh6 for now, for my large files, Rh7 has inferior viewport performance. reasons I use Rh7 for only specific tasks.
1- Model in Subd - Export to nurbs save down to Rh6
2- using Quad Remesh
and my new fav command "TestEnableMultiThreadedMeshing.
will keep testing both and will fully adopt Rhino V7 once I get performance improvement.
i only upgraded because i had to install a evaluation version due to new cad plans not opening. since i am still a student upgrading does not cost me much, so i bought the update finally, i would have not done it otherwise.
the biggest issue is not the increase of tools, but unfortunately the rapid degrading of the performance…
with the lucky 777 version of Rhino for mac i have the feeling it actually degraded again quite a bit, even just selecting a simple curve or a simple line in a bigger file takes a half a second to become responsive, grinding my teeth to sand.
performance has seen its peak somewhere before the last updates of Rhino 5 and has degraded ever since, as it has been said a million times all over the forum in the last couple of years.
I know folks who run a new and old machine side by side for just that reason-
your company is giving you cracked copy of rhino? Annnnd what company is this?
please send email to tech@mcneel.com with examples of broken tools (like extendsrf you mentioned above) so we can fix them.
v8 is planned to be m1 native running on metal-
are you on a mac or pc? please send this issue to tech@mcneel.com
please run the systeminfo command in rhino and send the report with your message. It’s very likely we can help or suggest how to improve your performance.
m1 full metal is coming (hopefully for v8) … it’ll then be a whole new game on the mac for CPU performance. GPU performance is still in question, we are hoping for the same level on improvement there, but it remains to be seen.
edit- note from our dev team:
““You got that backwards Kyle. Metal is all about display. Switching from OpenGL to Metal brings large gains in GPU display performance, not CPU.””
my bad, I stand corrected.