Any Rhino3D Users Here? Planning to Upgrade to Ver. 6?

[RandyM]

solid works, I would love to use it. They priced it to make sure only people in the industry could afford or justify the exorbitant cost. However, rhino is used in the industrial design and jewelry space - it depends on what you're doing. If you're doing drafting rhino is okay and R6 is better than R5 in this regard, SW for drafting though? I can't imagine I would go that route. AutoCAD would be a better fit if you need all the bells and whistles.

OP mentions he's already using R5 and likes the drafting interface, parametric modeling by comparison may feel pretty clunky if you're used to drafting in R5.

I guess you aren't aware of the full power of SolidWorks. It has all the bells and whistles you speak of for drafting and fully integrated with 3D.

 

[stuartw]

I guess you aren't aware of the full power of SolidWorks. It has all the bells and whistles you speak of for drafting and fully integrated with 3D.

You are correct I am unaware The last time I tried to find some general costing SW was north of $4000 and required a maintenance agreement of around $2000/year and AC was less than $2,000/year all in. I made no reference to the power of SW or AC. I have used rhino for years and AC is a natural progression if you're not wanting to go parametric (perhaps you can do standard drafting in SW - no idea, it's completely out of reach for me) and yes, you can do parametric in AC also though I have not tried.

So I guess to clarify, having some prior experience with AC - I can't imagine paying more than twice as much for a program if you're only going to use it for drafting when AC is purpose built for the task.

SW, from what I can glean from research can do it all and more and if a license and maintenance agreement fell on my lap I would ditch R6 in less than a heart beat and never speak of AC or Rhino again.

In any case, we may as well be comparing McLaren vs Ferrari. For hobbyists such as myself, AC and SW are out of reach.

 

[MontanaAardvark]

Thanks for the discussion, I've enjoyed this! (While I was out in the shop cutting out a part - incorrectly, it turns out, but I need to take off more metal, not put some back, so it's just some enforced rework time).

I have no experience with SolidWorks, but have used AutoCAD. My first attempt at a 3D CAD program was TurboCAD, which made me give up. Just never got it into my head. Thing is, my initial use was for jewelry, but as versions went by (I started with Rhino 3), I drifted more and more to little parts for models. I've used Rhino to model my house for laying out the addition we put on, and for modeling rings.

I can sit down with Rhino and produce a model like my house from the primitive shapes (cylinders, boxes, and so on) and generally get it to do what I want. I'm sure, though, that I don't use a tenth of its capability - I've never lofted curves, except during a tutorial, and only rarely have used the fillet command. Some of Rhino's insistence that solids and surfaces are from separate universes still baffles me. All I'd really be buying 6 for would be the bug fixes and improvements to the basics.

The main issue I have now is the cost. I took an early retirement offer a couple of years ago, and while there's a whole lot about retirement I love and would recommend to anyone, the reduced income isn't one of them. To replace Rhino and Deskproto, both of which could use it, I'm looking at close to $800. That could probably do my next dream job of upgrading my spindle. Fusion is the only real alternative to upgrading my software. I've worked through a handful of exercises, but just haven't had that "Ah ha!" moment.

Maybe by now there's a Fusion 360 for Rhino users tutorial out there.

 

[stuartw]

There are a lot of videos for F360 and there's also some very active groups of facebook; i can link the group i'm in if you like. The community has for the most part been really positive and helpful. The downside I found from the videos is they drone on a lot before making their point and sometimes they're providing non essential information which can cloud the picture a bit.

There's also a free training series produced by autodesk on how to use the product. when it comes to primitives and boolean operations there isn't really much difference between rhino and 360 and you can import your rhino models. I suspect you could be productive pretty quickly with your rhino experience. Where it may start to get muddled is going from sketch/modeling to cam. things are hidden in menus and the workflow is probably different than what you're used to

The big upside with 360 is it's completely free for hobby use and allows for some commercial work for startups and gives you 5 axis out of the box.

If you were looking to replace R5 with something more current and your CAM solution as well 360 is a really great place to start and if you have specific questions on how to do something equivalent in R5 in 360, I can try to answer.

hope this helps.

Stuart

 

[MontanaAardvark]

There's also a free training series produced by autodesk on how to use the product. when it comes to primitives and boolean operations there isn't really much difference between rhino and 360 and you can import your rhino models. I suspect you could be productive pretty quickly with your rhino experience.

In the few tutorials I went through, Boolean operations were never talked about. I did, however, import a pretty large Rhino model, the control box I designed for my G0704 CNC conversion. It seemed to import just fine.



I don't have a Facebook account, so thanks, but I'll pass on that group info unless there's some other way to interact with them.

 

[stuartw]

pretty nice model. I like it!

360 doesn't call it Boolean... to subtract: I created two bodies, then navigated up to the modify, selected combine, operation is set to 'cut' target in this case was the larger box, the tool the smaller box.



Step 2:


Step 3 'OK':

 

[MontanaAardvark]

pretty nice model. I like it!

Thanks! Best of all, it's accurate. The front, and back and panels were all pre-drilled, and the cutouts made on my Sherline mill. I had to reposition the back panel a few times to cut it due to work envelope issues, but once all the parts were made, it all went together just like it was supposed to.

And really thanks for that tip on the combine function. I think 90% of making bigger things in Rhino is "boolean2objects", at least the way I've settled on working. Your result looks just like what I'd get if I clicked on the small box first, then the big one, then clicked the mouse three times.