As a current Rhino 4 owner and having played with beta 5 while also having MoI my question is.....

How many Rhino users have ran into many instances in which Rhino was needed to finish a model as opposed to Rhino being used as a habit?

I am able to upgrade for around $350 to Rhino 5 and I almost did it but I was also thinking that I might upgrade with blinders on. Knowing that there are times that I still prefer using feature / history based CAD tools I find that MoI, when I force myself not to rely on CAD, does the work.

So, those of you that use MoI and Rhino, are you going to upgrade Rhino to 5 out of need or convenience (or just being used to Rhino).

Michael Gibson - since you clearly are quite knowledgeable in both Rhino and MoI maybe you can also chime in and hit the areas that maybe are not obvious to most people. I would hate to overlook a cool feature, like import/export options of Rhino that I rarely use.

Any feedback is great.

Hi mjs - well it depends a lot on the kind of work that you need to do.

There are a few pretty big general areas that Rhino does that MoI doesn't even attempt anything in yet, a few that come to mind immediately are 2D printed output, generating rendered output, and CAM plug-ins.

Because Rhino has a pretty extensive plug-in ecosystem there are a lot of add ons that you can get for it to do many different specific industry things also.

But it sounds like you already have another parametric type CAD program that you use for most of your work already?

As far as surfacing goes, there are a couple of specific tools that MoI does not have yet, an N-sided patch (for filling in irregular holes when doing surfacing), a multi-edge Blend and a surface matching tool are the most prominent ones missing currently in MoI. This is an area that I expect to work on improving in MoI soon in v3 though. But for now if you're doing a lot of advanced surfacing those are probably the particular surfacing tools that you would go into Rhino to use.

But I guess that you are also asking not just about how to use Rhino in combination with MoI but also about Rhino v4 compared to v5 - I don't think that there has been much changed in any of these particular surfacing areas from Rhino v4 to v5.

So if you're using Rhino only occasionally there might not be much of a reason to upgrade to v5 from v4, if you're using it more often for some particular feature then I'm sure that there are all kinds of various improvements here and there throughout so if you use it often then you'd benefit more from an upgrade probably.

- Michael

Hi mjs, I had been using Rhino from its early days, and I won't be upgrading to v5. I am tired of upgrading a licence for the sake of it. With each new release there has been fewer features that i needed, and the last two updates have not really covered their expense so this time I will be staying to MoI and since i started with MoI, i have found going back to Rhino clumsy, yet I used to say that Rhino was sleek and nimble.

There are some things that I miss from Rhino, but only from the hobbyist side of me with vehicle modelling, as a garden designer, my area is predominately 2D and I love the way NURBS especially MoI allow me to do free curves without having to use bezier type tools with grab a handle here and rotate this way etc, and now with DXF as an export option MoI has just come that bit sweeter. The Ability to render is not so important from a work perspective but desperately missed from hobby modelling, and I have toyed with the idea of looking at something like RhinoMan to see if it would possibly port to MoI but I sadly have little time to look into such things properly.

I am even considering constructing a Hackingtosh to see if I like Apple, over the years I have struggled with Windows and the two issues that left me staying put with MS was Rhino and the need for a good rendering engine, I have not looked into Apple based rendering engines much, but feel it gnawing at my bones to check em out.

Martin Spencer-Ford

Hi ...

I do use Rhino on a pretty much full time basis. I like the unified system that some of the plug-ins give me (Like Flamingo nXt for rendering) and, particularly, I use it for dimensions and notes for architectural drawings.

I don't really need it for dimensions and notes as there are now many programs that will do that very well ... but I know Rhino and am familiar with its work flow.

I strongly prefer MoI as an architectural modeling tool so I use it for all preliminary planning ... both 2d and 3d ... including basic drafting but when I have to start dimensions and notes I switch to Rhino and don't come back to MoI for the rest of the project except for making detail models of things I can simply insert into the Rhino file ... an example ... a house I am doing needed some appliances and furniture (pretty basic stuff) so I built those in MoI and imported them into a nearly completed Rhino file.

So, for a relatively small software budget, I have the best of all worlds from my perspective.

If I had a tighter budget I would use MoI for almost everything (including perspective color presentations with high quality screen shots) and then use the free DraftSight for 2d dimensions. There are other good free (or low cost) tools for noting and dimensioning 3d drawings, too.

I have just upgraded Rhino and am pleased that I could for a low cost. However, depending on future development of MoI that may not be my choice in the future.

cheers,
eric

Thanks TpwUK.

"I am tired of upgrading a licence for the sake of it. With each new release there has been fewer features that i needed" True. Very true.

I was concerned that I was falling into the trap of all the cool bells and whistles when the reality of software (for most users) is that 90% of the users use 10% of the tools available but 90% of the users buy the software because 80% of the features look cool.

"i have found going back to Rhino clumsy" That is the one thing that I do not like about Rhino. With all the power that it does have it seems like many of the ways to do the work is clumsy. You either need to memorize keyboard commands or have the cascading tool bars memorized. This here is one primary reason why MoI is the schiz....power with a very clean interface. Clean enough to where a novice can use it fairly well after a few hours.

Thanks for the reply Eric:

Dims and notes I have other tools but I am more a hobby user and am done with detail drawings. Two decades of that was enough but I still love the 3D.

Probably you and I are in the same arena though...IF I need 2D features like dims and notes I can use my other tools.

Michael:

Most of the things that you listed are things that I do not need Rhino for. I have Rhino, SolidWorks, SpaceClaim and Alibre Expert. I prefer MoI as I don't need detail drawings, simple FEA, CAM paths, etc. Rhino has always got me excited so it always sticks in my head as a needed tool but I am sure that beyond a few specific surface tools that I don't even know how to use, a solid MoI user can probably create most anything a strong Rhino user can create.

I think the surfacing items that you stated that MoI is missing now there are probably many work-arounds and this forum seems to have some awesome knowledge behind it.

I think I will stick with Rhino 4 and skip the updated.

Thank you and thanks to all that replied!

Now I get to blow that upgrade money on something else, right? Don't tell my wife.

mjs

Hello,

l use MoI and Rhino v5 regularly. I use Rhino when I have to and MoI for everything else. The reason I purchased Rhino was for its Make2D command with hidden line removal. I had a need to do some surfacing that was not possible in MoI or Rhino but was available from VSR as a Rhino plugin, as well as some basic FEA from Scan and Solve. I realize it's pure opinion but MoI is my favorite 3D package for usability hands down. I'd say 90% in MoI and the last 10% of finishing work in other applications. I am going to upgrade to Rhino v5 since I do find it faster in 64 bit operation. I still think Rhino has one if the worst interfaces, but I do think it is a very good value and excellent compliment to MoI.

Hi msj,

Back when I worked as a Jeweller, I purchased R4 & V-Ray for Rhino as a Render Plug-in.
Having MoI, I've rarely used R4 for my modeling, except when needing something like "CageEdit".
Basically I now use R4 to allow me to Copy & Paste my MoI model, so I can render it with V-Ray.

And now Rhino & V-Ray are both due to be upgraded...

To upgrade both R5 & V-RfR just to do renders, well I'll buy SimLab Composer as a stand alone program for a lot less!
I don't make jewellery any more, so rarely have I found the need for using "CageEdit" when doing my current models.
R5-x64 would be nice, but I've rarely created anything so complex that I've absolutely needed it.

...personally I can't see myself upgrading either of them.

But I WILL be upgrading to MoI V3

HTH, Colin

I will probably upgrade to Rhino 5 for the Python support (particularly the Grasshopper component), and 64bit support to handle larger files.

grasshopper is a pretty awesome tool. I wish I had need for it beyond just playing around.

I really like Rhino 5. There was a big performance increase from Rhino v3 to v4, and there is big performance increase from v4 to v5 (there is also a 64 bit version of Rhino 5). Working with lots of layers and geometry is easy (including imported meshes from other apps). As already mentioned there are a number of plugins available to tailor and enhance Rhino. Including Neon a free fully raytraced viewport plug-in for Rhino 5.0.

MoI and Rhino 5 together are awesome!

"...Neon a free fully raytraced viewport plug-in for Rhino 5.0"

That is a pretty sexy combo. I went to youtube and watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDm4xosy5IQ&feature=youtu.be.

Thanks for speaking up.....and probably making me spend the upgrade money :-P

What is the price of Neon ?

At this point Neon is free ... and it is a good tool .. it is slightly jumpy on my machines as it has to create a raytrace each time its moved ... so for most work I would rather use the display built in to MoI.
eric

It's pretty peppy on my new machine.

I also use MOI and Rhino together and have already upgraded to V5. I work with large mesh files (resulting from 3D scanning) and for me the 64bit version is worth every cent of the upgrade price.

Why MOI? I use it during the prototype stage of a project. I really like the speed with which I can create a concept model then dump it (via stl) to my 3D printer.