Quest for the strength of Rhino 3D

I have  came to know of Rhino 3D for more than 10 years. In the beginning, when it was still in its infancy, I downloaded the free trial version to play for a while. At the first sight of Rhino 3D, I was quite amazed because I thought how a NURBS modeling program can be so affordable. Back then I used Alias Studio at work to create some complex curvilinear shapes that were then hard to be modelled by Solidworks I used every day. Honestly I was a bit distasteful of Alias Studio. It was a program built on Silicon Graphics workstation and was very hard to use because it was so powerful and has so many variables that need my attention and tweaking. I was lost often in using Alias and thus quipped that learning to use Alias is like studying rocket science.

Then Rhino 3D came. It was offered as a low-cost but powerful enough NURBS modeling program under a unique business model of Robert McNeel & Associates. Though I downloaded the program to try but never paid a full attention to learn it. My company even sent me to learn it at Magnetic Visions in Brooklyn, NY in 2011. Through the training I learned the basic modeling skills in Rhino 3D, but thought that why bothering with Rhino while in Solidworks I can use hybrid of solid/surface modeling techniques to take care of most 3D modeling task.

I decided lately to dig deeper into learning Rhino and encountered several issues, which I have to get used to. The issues I have with Rhino 3D are: first of all, it is a program born out of AutoCAD era, meaning its interface bears the resemblance of CAD programs in that era. It has a command prompt window. Even though there is an alternative icon in pulldown menu to get to each command, a user still has to use command lines to get to the options under a command most of the time. Some commands are followed by the dialogue windows once selected, but only a few. Secondly, to make a sketch for modeling, the sketch normally falls on front, side, top or construction plane. This is something I have been struggling with because I am so used to parametric modeling in Solidworks where I can simply click on a plane surface to start a sketch. So far as I know, in Rhino to start a sketch it is easier to adhere the sketch to front, side, top or construction plane. Elevator Mode may be the only antidote I have found so far to break a 2D sketch away from the construction plane to which it adhere. Thirdly, Solidworks has simplified the steps of many model features that employ Boolean algorithm, for example, shelling a solid block. Shell command only becomes available since Rhino 5. Fourthly and the least is that Rhino is not a CAD program for engineers, it lacks the parametric modeling features and does not have a design feature tree that can be rolled back and forth as in Solidworks.

So that I have to bear in mind that certain modeling tasks can be done better elsewhere than in Rhino. I just have to find the strength of Rhino where other CAD programs fall short or cannot do better. Keep reading ....