Recently, McNeel and Associates, Inc., has announced the release of Rhinoceros 7, the most significant update in the history of the product.
Rhino 7 includes Grasshopper and together they add numerous new powerful features, improvements and optimizations, in addition to new interoperabilities with other applications. Rhino 7 can even directly affect how you use your BIM tools.
Rhino 7 – General Features
SubD combines free-form accuracy for those who need to explore organic shapes quickly, while still allowing quick editing. SubD is a new geometry type that can create editable, highly accurate shapes.
SubD is unlike other geometry types, it combines free-form accuracy while still allowing quick editing.
Demanding updates are needed with the growing popularity of Grasshopper, such as in Rino 7, adding more new components and making programs into plugins for easier use and wider distribution of definitions around the office.
Grasshopper Player turns your GH definitions into Rhino commands. There there is also new “clash detection”—a term coming from the BIM world—which helps you quickly find where objects occupy the same space. There is also Package Manager in Rhino 7, an entirely new way to add plugins; you won’t have to leave Rhino now to install plugins. For developers, the Package Manager simplifies the publication and distribution process.
Emissive materials are a new feature in Rhino 7.
In Rhino 7 there are significant updates to the Rhino Render engine and other presentation tools. Support for PBR (physically-based rendering) materials is new, as is Denoisers that help clean up draft renderings beautifully shortening down presentation rendering times. Other improvements and new features aiding your Rhino work presentations include Emissive Materials, Light Falloff, LayerBook, and Gradient and Transparent Hatches.
There is also new Mold Making Tools, Named Selections, Single-Line Fonts and improved support for file formats.
Rhino 7 – BIM Features
Rhino 7 can now be fully integrated directly into your BIM tools. To learn about the workflows below, register for the free webinar by PAZ Academy on December 15th to see how Rhino and Grasshopper run with Revit and Archicad at the same time.
Rhino.Inside.Technology allows Rhino 7 and Grasshopper to run within Revit. Integrate the best of both popular tools into one workflow.
Archicad can be linked directly to Rhino 7 and Grasshopper by bringing the best of Rhino to Archicad. More than that, it is now possible to connect Archicad and Revit through Grasshopper using the direct connection in real-time.
Rhino 7 features Rhino.Inside technology. Shown here is Rhino.Inside.Revit which is based on technology that brings Rhino and GH into 64-bit Windows apps.
Enscape has released a Rhino 7 compatible version with several options to upgrade to the new Enscape version 2.9.1. Lastly, Conveyer by Proving Ground has also been updated to run in Rhino 7. Conveyor is a geometry and data management plugin for user-friendly compatibility between Rhino and Revit software applications.
Development Platform
This update also brings big improvements to McNeel’s free SDKs (software development kits) with API refinements (995 new items), better documentation, RhinoCommon, rhino3dm Libraries, Rhino.Inside, Rhino.Inside.Revit and more.
As Architosh has written before, Rhino.Inside is new technology that allows embedding Rhino into 64-bit Windows applications. Rhino.Inside.Revit is based on that technology.
Availability of Rhino 7
Those interested in Rhino 7, available for both Windows and Mac can download an evaluation version here. This evaluation version works for 90-days and then will no longer support plugins or allow file saving. However, the evaluation version will continue working itself after 90 days just without those two capabilities (which is good for learning Rhino and view Rhino files).
The Mac evaluation version is available here. It requires an Intel Apple Mac and must run on macOS Mojave (10.14.6) or later. Apple Silicon Macs (M1 processor-based) are not supported.
Rhino 7 for Mac or Windows new licenses cost USD 995.00. Upgrades from older single-user licenses are USD 395. Click here for more. Systems requirements for both platforms are found here.
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