Rhino alternative

davide445 · Apr 17, 2016

Got the message SpaceClaim it's not the most popular CAD, testing Rhino for our rev engineering task, I find the UX difficult to use.

Interested to know if there are out there any similar priced option with a better/modern UX with similar features useful for RE (mesh load, slicing, blending or surfacing using NURBS).

gkoenig · Apr 17, 2016

Easy: Fusion 360

DavidScott · Apr 17, 2016

Fusion is worth a try but I don't think it compares well to Rhino for surfacing. Just depends on your needs.

davide445 · Apr 18, 2016

Test task and first customer request is RE an eyewear, starting from the bow.
Right now testing the process where I did import the mesh, slice it, create curves from slice, blend curves to complete shape.
Will try Fusion but doesn't have a limit of 10k polygons in the imported mesh?

gregormarwick · Apr 18, 2016

I'm hesitant to recommend a Delcam product while autodesk are in charge of them, but all the same;

You might want to look at powershape as its heavily geared towards this kind of task.

Powershape reverse engineering

davide445 · Apr 18, 2016

Already tested Delcam Powershape, didn't find it better UX than Rhino and also was crashing with the 1Mil poly model I did import.
Looking at something that can not only resurface using NURBS but also doing slicing and blending of meshes such as this examples
stl surfboard recreate1 tutorial - YouTube
Demo Rhino sections and linesplans - YouTube
Installed Fusion I was able to import the STL, but can't find a way to achieve this.

Dan B · Apr 18, 2016

I'm assuming by "UX" you are referring to the user interface? The tabs, icons etc? If you don't like them, just change them. Easy.

Also, have you looked at any of the plug-ins that are available for Rhino to help with RE?

http://www.resurf3d.com/

Mesh2Surface

davide445 · Apr 18, 2016

For UX referring to User Experience, meaning not only the UI but the general usability and worflow, not only icons and colors but also how the commands are available, how are organized, the necessary steps to achieve a result.

The Rhino plugins did add a great deal of cost at the package, my goal is to find an alternative considering basic Rhino cost tag.

Testing Fusion 360 appear to be nice but slow in term of saving and also mesh handling (take some time just to enter in sketch mode).

Any other suggested alternative with local data saving?

DavidScott · Apr 18, 2016

Supposedly Fusion is going to get a real boost when working with meshes in a near term update. I have heard good things about Alias from an ex Rhino user for what you are wanting, but it is far more $$$$. Rhino is hard to beat for Nurbs at that price point. Fusion has T-Splines but my experience is they are not as accurate as Nurbs when extruding profiles, but they are incredible when just doing eyeball edits.

gregormarwick · Apr 18, 2016

Have you tried optimising the mesh to some extent before importing? Does it need to be 1m+ poly's to serve your purposes?

If the sheer quantity of data is crashing potential solutions, then maybe thin out the density a little first.

Meshlab's quadric edge collapse filter is very useful for this.

davide445 · Apr 19, 2016

I did reduce the mesh to 10k poly trough various passages using GOM Inspect.

Can't find a way to transform to quadratic mesh using Memento or MeshLab, first one never finish to save quad obj, second one never generating quad using any of the Filters.

Fusion is much faster, but testing the Intersect Mesh Body plugin can't find a way to align the plan to the object normal and also to copy it such as in the SpaceClaim video.

Since I did have some measurement of the bow I want to use them on the cut profiles, and next blend together. Maybe there is some better process to follow.

garyhlucas · Apr 20, 2016

After 12 years of using other 3d modelers Rhino is still on my computer like the Leatherman in my pocket. It might not be pretty or fast or parametric but I never fail to fix things that choke the others. It is simply a great tool.

SRDC · May 17, 2016

Not sure why SpaceClaim isn't popular - I used it a couple of years ago at a startup I was working with, and I was impressed by the UX -- with a little bit of reading the docs for the first couple days, I was modeling faster than I ever have --- and I've used SolidWorks, Inventor, Creo, ...

That said, it's not a parametric modeler, which is why we use Geomagic Design right now. It has all the SolidWorks features we need, the UX is about as good as any parametric modeler. Take the time in whatever package you use to map every command to a keyboard shortcut - productivity skyrockets.
We use Fusion360 ... as little as possible. It'd probably be okay with a fantastic internet connection, but ours can be somewhat temperamental, and that really chokes Fusion360. Also, I don't particularly appreciate the UI ... but that is probably tied to personal preference and a lack of motivation because we won't use a solely cloud-based product for our primary package.

bishopdante · Jun 7, 2016

from video post production world:

modo:

exports to NURBS or Solidworks. Good for rendering.

moldcore · Jun 10, 2016

I've been using KeyCreator for 25+ years. It used to be called Cadkey and used an add-on called Fastsurf back then. Surfacing has been included for the past 15+ years. Here's a YouTube video on surfacing: Basic Surface Creation with KeyCreator Direct CAD - YouTube

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