Architecture event in Cartagena, Colombia

Join McNeel Miami and BITS Ltda in Cartagena, Colombia on October 1-3, 2008, at the XXI Bienal Colombiana de Arquitectura - Expoarquitectura.

Learn how Rhino is being used in the architecture industry.
Visit BITS in Stand #63.

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New taxis for Mexico City

In the September 2008 edition of Develop3D magazine, learn about how the new Mexico City taxis were designed in Rhino by a team from Rigoletti Casa de Diseño.

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New Rhino video tutorials

New tutorials based on the Barcelona Pavilion from David Fano. Enjoy.

• Bitmap Underlay - placing, scaling moving a background image using Rhino 4.0
• Drawing The Plan - basic steps of drawing a plan, setting layers, creating blocks
• Drawing The Section - basics of drawing in 3D, modifying cPlane, line projection
• Building a 3D Model

Inside the World's Coolest Company

In the September 2008 edition of Develop3D magazine, France Corbet provides a view into Lego's design and development process.

Download...

Conference proceedings available

The proceedings for the Advances in Architectural Geometry conference are now available.

RhinoScript Labs update

RhinoScript is a scripting language based on Microsoft's VBScript language. With RhinoScript, you can quickly add functionality to Rhino, or automate repetitive tasks.

The Labs version of RhinoScript contains additions and modifications to the version of RhinoScript included with Rhino 4.0 SR4.

Details and download...

rhinoreverse ships new version

ships version 2.9 with many new features and enhancements.

Details...

ACADIA Rhino workshops - nearly full

The Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) together with the Digital Design Consortium in the School of Architecture and Computer Science at the University of Minnesota is holding the ACADIA 2008 conference in Minneapolis, October 16 - 19, 2008.

This year's conference entitled "Silicon + Skin: Biological Processes and Computation" seeks to identify and examine current trends in digital design technologies developed and applied in the framework of biologically inspired processes and digitally assisted sustainable design.

The Rhinoscript and Grasshopper ACADIA workshops are full, but there are still a few spaces available in the Building an Emergent Urbanscape workshop.

Details...

Free marine workshop - nearly full

Using real-time analysis to improve design efficiency

An efficient design process demands quick analysis of hydrostatic properties, stability characteristics, and performance. With the Orca3D marine design plugin for Rhino, the designer receives real-time analysis feedback as the model is created and modified.

Where: IBEX 2008, Miami Beach, Florida
When: Monday, October 6, 1 PM-2 PM
Presenters: Steve Baer and Bruce Hays

There are only a few spaces left.
Free exhibit and workshop registration...

How did they do that?

Naval architect Paul Bieker and Eric Jolley are partners in a Seattle based design office, Bieker Boats. Eric, a long-time Rhino user, provides the details on how they developed and built Shearwater, a high-efficiency power cruiser, in the latest issue (#115) of Professional BoatBuilder (page 162).

As for the other project they don't get to talk about much... Paul has been in charge of structural design for the BMW Oracle racing team for its past two America's Cup campaigns. Unfortunately, nobody is talking in detail about how it was designed and built. Here are Paul's comments.

Rhino Reseller Meeting - Barcelona

Rhino resellers, 3rd-party developers, and McNeel development and support staff from around the world gathered for 3 days last week in Barcelona. There were no major announcements but they were many discussions about everything that is happening in the fast growing Rhino community. Presentations were made by:

• Users
  • Marc Torres and Sergio de la Parra
  • Tobias Nagel
  • Marc Fornes
  • Jess Maertterer
• McNeel Regional Offices
• 25 third-party developers

Everyone was excited to learn more about the size and diversity of the Rhino community – trading many stories about users, projects, and applications from around the world.

Generative design and architecture

Andrea Graziano has the new blog, DigitAG&, where he is tracking what is happening in generative design and architecture. There are many interesting RhinoScript and Grasshopper projects.

Tobias Nagel - user web site

Tobias Nagel has been a great resource for many Rhino users. He selflessly shares his vast expertise on the Rhino support newsgroup.

Check out his newweb site...

Rhino 4 SR4b released

Rhino 4 Service Release 4b is now available to download. Service Release 4b contains a small number of important fixes:

• Installer: deploying Rhino 4 SR4 with Ative Directory or SMS resulted in "Error 1606. Could not access network location empty." This is fixed in the SR4b installer.
• Open:DWG/DXF: Display of very large polyline on import did not work correctly. This is fixed.
• SaveAS: SAT: Now includes a scale factor. This should be a big help to Revit users.
• Crash when closing the Options dialog box has been fixed.
• For a complete list, and to download, visit http://download.rhino3d.com/whatsnew.asp?rel=391

Automatic check-for-updates notifications will be enabled Monday, September 29, 2008.

Download Now...

Prototyping for yacht designers

Rhino user, Dan Clarke, provides yacht designers with physical conceptual models early in the design process using rapid prototyping technology.

Details...

PanelingTools Updated

A new release of PanelingTools plug-in for Rhino 4.0 is available for download. New in this release:

• Added ptManage3dPatterns command to create, edit or delete user-defined 3D patterns and save to document. These patterns are listed in ptPanel3D command.
• Added "Shift" options to ptOrientToGrid command. Also fixed a bug in this command that used to flip module direction.
• Fixed I/O bug in ptMange2dPatterns command.
• Added cancel thread when creating panels faces.
• Fixed a bug when paneling polysurfaces. Panels along joints were not properly calculated
• Added "Delete" option to ptMange2dPatterns to show next to "New" and "Edit" options.

Grasshopper does Slow Food

The team from Sagan Piechota Architecture just finished an exhibition project for the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. They used the Grasshopper plug-in extensively to figure out how to build a suspended ceiling with over 3,000 mason jar lids. It may be the first large-scale built prototype to use Grasshopper.

Details...

PanelingTools Updated

A new release of PanelingTools plugin for Rhino 4 is available to download. New in this release:

• This release is compiled for SR4. If you haven't downloaded the latest Rhino 4 critical update, then please do, otherwise, the plugin will not load.
• Added ptOrientToGrid command. It allows selecting any number of objects, then orient (flow) them along paneling grid. It supports "Rigid=Yes/No" option.
• Added ptManage2dPattern command to create/edit user-defined patterns and save to document. These patterns are listed in commands like ptPanelGrid.
• Added ptGridCurve2 command. It allows selecting a second directional curve.
• History used to be broken between grid creation and paneling commands. This is now fixed.
• Input curves in commands ptGridUCurves and ptGridUVCurves are now ordered (sorted) so that you don't have to pick curves in order. Group select of curves is also supported.
• Added Polar option to ptGridCurve command. A Polar option is also available in the new ptGridCurve2 command.
• Fixed a few performance bugs.
• Fixed a few other miscellaneous bugs.