February, Friday 1st 2013
Assigment : Model (draw, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project, and post it on your class page
Today we were introduced to Rhinoceros 3D.
I work with this program as a daily basis so I am familiar to its workflow. I find Rhino a very ituitive and powerful piece of software.
At first I used AutoCAD as my 3D program, then I got used to SketchUps easy user interface, so I stick with it for several years until I was introduced to Rhino about 4 years ago.
I still use AutoCAD and Sketchup. AutoCAD mostly for 2D, and SketchUp for quick modelling 3D, I find it faster for concept modelling.
Since a single program cant do it all, I use them all together for different propouses.
I have also tried Cinema4D, Modo, Blender and several other programs, but as this day I prefer Rhino because of the virtues above mentioned.
The only problem is that at this moment I am a Mac user and Rhino for Mac is still under development. That means most of the advanced plug-ins for Rhino are not supported in Mac version. Grasshopper for example only runs in Windows, so I had to install Windows through Parallels on my Mac. Not a great idea to have Windows on Mac.
You can download Rhino V5 OSX WIP version here ( 10.6.8 OSX or later):
Mac V5 Rhino Work In Progress for OS X Lion (10.7) or later : http://mac.rhino3d.com/content/DownloadWIP5.aspx
Unsupported version for OS X 10.6.8 : http://mac.rhino3d.com/content/DownloadWIP106.aspx
You can download Rhino V5 for Windows here:
http://www.rhino3d.com/download/rhino/5.0/evaluation
I have a long history with Sketchup. And still I love this program. Its like sculpting with your own hands. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but when you get used to it, it could be as precise as any other CAD program.
I have used it for more than 10 years now. I remember downloading it when it was developed by @Last software. Then Google bought it and it became popular. Some months ago Trimble, another software company bought it from Google. It has a lot of powerful plug-ins as well. I think they are based on Ruby coding.
I think Google bought it in the first place because of Google Earth. It somehow became a crowdsourcing 3D project where people can model their own neighborhood and upload it to Google Earth.
Now satellite photograhy has evolved and they are using other technologies to achieve the same goal, 3D model entire cities.
You can download Trimble Sketchup here :
http://www.sketchup.com/download/
Other programs I use, have used or tried to use and worth to take a look:
CAD | 3D modelling
TopMod
Rhino 3D model of the proposal