The release of Rhino 7 is the most significant in the 30 years since Rhinoceros3D was first introduced. At its heart, RhinoCommon offers a powerful geometry engine with high mathematical accuracy, and with new features like SubD modeling and Clash Detection, it is only getting better.
If you haven’t already purchased a license of Rhino 7, I hope that by the end of this article you are convinced that it provides huge value out-of-the-box and great potential in the future.
Rhino3d.com/7/new/ lists all of the new features and capabilities of Rhino 7. For ease of navigating, links to some of the best features are listed below:
Grasshopper was packaged as part of Rhino 6, and now with the GH Player, Plugins can be built to receive User Defined Inputs without the need to open and run the Grasshopper definition.
A full list of all of the new Commands that are available. For quick reference and similar to past versions, there is a tab called New in V7 which has some of the best new commands.
In addition to all of these new and enhanced features that come with Rhino 7, there is much effort afoot to bring the capabilities of Rhino into almost any environment (Rhino.Inside).
The foundations of Rhino are ready for broader and deeper applications of its capabilities. As plugins for Rhino have been developed over the years, it has spurred a thriving developer community with advanced tools for data and geometry manipulation.
In Version 6, Rhino was made into a Dynamic Link Library (DLL), which allowed for a couple of things to happen in the development of Rhino 7:
A. Plugins (particularly C++) developed for Rhino 6 will work with Rhino 7 and possibly later versions without breaking the SDK.
For scripters, this provides a more solid footing for the development and support that would be necessary for plugins.
For Firms and BIM/VDC Managers, this gives more long-term reliability in the tools that are incorporated into certain workflows
B. Rhino can be run as a plugin within other applications
Standalone Console Apps / .NET Web Servers (Rhino Compute)
CPython
Revit (Rhino.Inside.Revit)
Rhino Compute lets Rhino run on a .NET Web Server, effectively bringing Rhino to the cloud. Startups such as Hypar are working to bring Grasshopper scripting and much more to the web browser, allowing for design input to come from anyone, anywhere.
The most popular flavor of the Rhino.Inside technology is Rhino.Inside.Revit (beta, free), which has effectively made Rhino 7 the largest possible plugin for Revit. Not only is it the full version of Rhino running within Revit’s memory space, but all of the plugins are compatible with Rhino 7 as well. Plugins that had been developed for Rhino 6 remain compatible, so the functionality that is part of many scripts and workflows can endure.
There are new Grasshopper Components found in V7, with the majority available within Rhino.Inside.Revit, in the Revit Tab.
Rhino 7 provides a framework with minimal barriers to entry. From the lone wolf coder to the multi-national firm, Rhino 7 can be very powerful if leveraged properly. A great conversation with Steve Baer, Luis Fraguada, and Will Pearson of Robert McNeel & Associates can be found on ProArchitect’s Youtube page. They discuss the rationale and forward-thinking concepts behind Rhino 7 and the Rhino.Inside technology, but for the most part, opine on Rhino Compute.
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