What is Rhino?

Rhinoceros – Modeling Tools for Designers and Architects

Since its first release in 1998, Rhinoceros®, or Rhino®, has become one of the standard 3D modeling tools for designers and architects.

Rhino can create, edit, analyze, document, render, animate, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces, and solids with no limits on complexity, degree, or size. Rhino also supports polygon meshes and point clouds. Its accuracy and flexibility make it possible to students to explore and build their ideas without having to spend much time learning “CAD”.

Start with a sketch, drawing, physical model, scan data, or only an idea—Rhino provides the tools to accurately model and document your designs ready for rendering, animation, drafting, engineering, analysis, and manufacturing or construction.

Also, any geometry created in Rhino can be exported to laser cutters, milling machines, or 3D printers, and this is really what makes Rhino different from general 3D modelling tools based on polygons, where you can create great images, but without manufacturing precision.

Rhino’s open architecture allows using also Rhino as a development platform: a C++ SDK and a series of scripting methods (RhinoScript) allow programmers of any level of expertise to customize and automate Rhino and extend its capabilities. Today, there are dozens of commercial plug-ins for Rhino for nesting, terrain creation, parametric architecture, rendering, animation, CAM, subdivision modelling, jewelry, mold design, etc.

With more than 300,000 commercial users and more than 10,000 schools, Rhinoceros allows to quickly develop your designs and accurately communicate them to everyone in the product research, development, marketing, and manufacturing or construction process.

A free Evaluation version can be downloaded at www.rhino3d.com/eval.htm

VisualARQ in Rhino:

VisualARQ is fully integrated in Rhino 5 (32 and 64 bit), Rhino 6, and Rhino 7.

It uses the same workflow, and all the Rhino tools and commands to work with 2D and 3D objects can be combined with the VisualARQ objects.

Curve creation and 2D drawing Tools:

Point, Line, Curve, Polyline, Circle, Ellipse, Arch, Rectangle, Polygon, etc.

Fillet, Symetry, Offset, Curve, Extend, Curve, Rebuilt, Hatch, Dimension, Line Types, Text, etc.

Surface and Solids creation:

Surface from points, Surface from curves, Loft, Patch, Rectangular Plane, Sweep 1 and 2 rails, Extrude, etc.

Box, Cylinder, Sphere, Ellipsoid, Cone, Pyramid, Tube, Torus, etc.

2D and 3D Tools and Object transformation:

Curves, Surfaces, Solids, Meshes, Join, Explode, Trim, Split, Group, Control points, Text, Create block, etc.

Move, Copy, Rotate, Scale, Mirror, Align, Array, etc.

Visualization modes

Wireframe, Shaded, Ghosted, Rendered, Artistic, Custom, etc.