rhino and solidworks in the process

Skills software and technology
1

hi there,

how is the current situation on the rhino / solid works subject? are a lot of studios using rhino as the primary tool and
afterwards just doing the engineering part in solid works? or did the majority of designer completely switch over to sw?

thanks,
dave

2

From what I’ve heard/what the firm I’m at does: Rhino/SW for surfaces (class A) for form explorations, rapid prototyping, etc… Once that has been figured out, we pass it to engineers who use Pro/E, etc.

3

I don’t believe that SW can do class A surfaces (I define as direct control over the curvature… one level up from curvature continuous).

To the OP, most of our designers use rhino, a few use SW. The engineers use SW or pro|e (based on client preference). However, even if the designer and engineer both use SW, the engineer will start with a fresh database and use the ID for an underlay… the database is more robust this way.

4

loughnane: SW can do “class A” surfaces, just depends on the feature is used and what the sketches have as relationships. Pick up that SW surfacing book if after reading that you can’t make that “class A” surface then pull out Alias…

Currently I’d put Modo/SW as a more versatile combo than Rhino/SW. If it’s shape generation, creation, and exploration…then Modo is faster, easier, and ‘funner’ than Rhino.

5

I really want to try Modo! I’ve seen some pretty damn great stuff modeled with it. So… how steep is the learning curve?

6

To the above poster,

I ve got a friend who uses modo and he said that its much more similar to old school animation modelers (3D max, maya, etc.). I heard that it got a bit of a learning curve for ppl using SW but the results are amzing, I think the spaceship in district 9 was modelled with modo.

7

We use Rhino for design options and viz comm for marketing through engineering, but my engineers use SW and it certainly does create Class A surfaces.

Also, someone mentioned not using the actual Rhino data as a start to an SW database - that’s not entirely accurate, as we do sometimes utilize the Rhino work if the parts close as solids and are well built.