Inventor vs Rhino

[rhasell]

Can someone please offer some advice on the following.

I have no clue what Rhino is about, or how good it is, perhaps someone can enlighten me.

We do a tremendous amount of work for one of our clients, who used to be exclusivly AutoCAD, they have now been spoilt with the work I have given them in Inventor. I get the impression a salesman has been to see them, because they now want to go Rhino with a Grasshopper plugin making it parametric. This will apparently put Inventor to shame?

I have been to their web site, but trying get get anything worthwhile is quite tedious, Thats one positive for Autodesk, they want people to understand and use their products.

Thank you.

[graemev]

I have generally seen Rhino used for non-engineering work: 3D printing files, computer graphics, gaming models, etc.  Inventor's background is in the engineering and technical fields.  They are both useful tools.  You may wish to point out to your clients that a hammer is not a screwdriver.  *shrug*

[Ray_Feiler]

Have you checked out this one? http://www.grasshopper3d.com/

[Anonymous]

From my experience with both Rhino is more artistic with freeform modeling etc. whereas Inventor is more engineering oriented. That's just my experience though so it depends on what your application is.

[stevec781]

Rhino's advantage - cost

Disadvantage - no drawing tools, people produce nice models with it but then have to export to create drawings.

Inventor has poor interoperability with rhino.  Solidworks and Ironcad can maintain an associative link with Rhino files, Inventor cant.

[JDMather]

if they have a real need for that type of modeler - you might have them look at Fusion 360 (not to be confused with the retired Inventor Fusion).  Price for Fusion 360 is competitive (I think it is $25/month).

[rhasell]

Thanks for all the info guys, hopefully we can convince them that Rhino will not be suitable for their needs.

Our industry is Structural and Architectural, focusing on Tensile membrane structures. I guess Rhino will make pretty pictures of the roof, but will not do any FEA or create pattern etc.

We use Inventor to do all the steel construction required to hold these structures up, but use NDN to do all the FEA as well as create the Membrane roof.

With the latetest version of Inventor, we are now starting to do FEA on the welded connections, which NDN does not do automatically, it it still a manual process.

[schneik-adsk]

JD is right -  $25 a month per user for Fusion 360. You can try it now free for 90 days. Visit www.autodesk.com/tryfusion360

[stevec781]

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@rhasell wrote:

Thanks for all the info guys, hopefully we can convince them that Rhino will not be suitable for their needs.

Our industry is Structural and Architectural, focusing on Tensile membrane structures. I guess Rhino will make pretty pictures of the roof, but will not do any FEA or create pattern etc.

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hopefully we can convince them that Rhino will not be suitable for their needs     Why?  Are you trying to get the best result for your employer or Autodesk?  

Scan and Solve is a very good and low cost add in for FEA in Rhino.

[Anonymous]

Rhino has no drawing tools? Oh really!

[stevec781]

Let me re-phrase.  Rhino has drawing tools, but everyone I know exports their model to autocad for detailing.  Even the Rhino webite says very little about 2D plans, most of the images are of 3D models.  However Rhino 5 does have some enhancements in this area, but still the users I know prefer to export to another program for detailing.  There must be a good reason for that, or perhaps I just dont know enough Rhino users.

[Anonymous]

Where have you been the past 10 years? By Rhino v.4 the drawing tools were
better than AutoCad (have used both extensively). Just because you haven't
see Rhino 2D drawings doesn't mean they're not there.