New plugin - SmartMenu brings commands closer in Rhino 8

Discover SmartMenu–a configurable, cursor-centered command interface for Rhino 8.

Rhino offers a vast range of tools, but frequently moving between the model, toolbars, and command line can interrupt your workflow. As custom commands and macros accumulate, keeping everything organized can also become a challenge.

Developed by CAD Projects, SmartMenu keeps your most-used tools close to the cursor. Middle-click within a Rhino viewport to open a compact menu containing native Rhino commands and custom macros, organized into color-coded groups. Create favorites and switch between task-specific menus to suit different stages of your work.

SmartMenu also includes a context-aware command HUD. When an active Rhino command presents options, the HUD displays them directly inside the viewport, reducing cursor travel and keeping your attention on the model.

You can customize menu layouts, groups, colors, tooltips, and HUD appearance. You can also back up and transfer complete setups between computers, making it easy to maintain a consistent workspace.

SmartMenu is designed for architects, designers, engineers, fabricators and anyone looking for a faster, more adaptable way to work in Rhino.

Available for Rhino 8 on Windows. Developed by CAD Projects Australia.

More information and download...

AECtech 2026 Annual Conference

AECtech 2026 Annual Conference

By CORE studio | Thornton Tomasetti

New York, NY | November 9-15, 2026

AECtech returns to New York City for its annual gathering of architects, engineers, designers, developers, and technology leaders. The week includes tech tours, a tech crawl, workshops, a two-day symposium, and a 26-hour hackathon.

Tech Tours
November 9 | Approximately 3:00 PM-7:00 PM (EST)

Enjoy contemporary New York City projects with the architects, engineers, and delivery teams behind them. Tour start times vary.

Tech Crawl
November 10 | 3:00 PM-7:00 PM (EST)

Join your colleagues for a walking tour of architecture and engineering firms, design studios, and software companies. Each crawl includes office tours and presentations on the teams’ processes and practices.

Workshops
November 11 | 9:00 AM-5:00 PM (EST)

Spend the day learning practical workflows from design innovators and software experts. Workshops focus on tools and methods that can improve—and expand—design practice.

Symposium
November 12-13 | 8:00 AM-5:00 PM (EST)

Hear presentations, discussions, and panels from leaders in AEC design and technology. The two-day program examines current practice and what's ahead for the industry. The symposium is available in person and via livestream.

Hackathon
November 14-15 | 9:00 AM-3:00 PM (EST)

Form a team and build something in a 26-hour hackathon, starting Saturday morning and running until Sunday afternoon. AECtech’s Hackathon is for programmers, developers, engineers, and others of all levels.

All events are in person, except the Symposium Live Stream. Find ticket information and event details on the AECtech conference page.

INTERFACE: Hack the Space Between—A 24-Hour Hackathon

INTERFACE: Hack the Space Between

#SF Tech Week

Saturday, October 10, 11:00 AM—Sunday, October 11, 5:00 PM

INTERFACE is a 24-hour hackathon that challenges the best devs to reinvent how humans interface with machines, the world, and each other. Every breakthrough in computing has been an interface breakthrough: The mouse, the touchscreen, Brain-Computer Interface. We're now living through the biggest interface explosion in history, and INTERFACE gives students the hardware, APIs, and creative space to define what comes next. This event is a part of #SFTechWeek—a week of events hosted by VCs and startups to bring together the tech ecosystem.

 

Learn more →​.

food4Rhino webinar: Talk to your Rhino - Raven AI V2 launch! (October 7, 2026 at 4 PM CEST)

 

food4Rhino webinar

Talk to your Rhino - Raven AI V2 launch!

October 7, 2026 at 4 PM CEST

What could you create if you could talk to Rhino? Join Moritz Rietschel and Philipp Hölzenbein for a masterclass in Raven CAD V2 and discover a new way to create, edit, and automate with AI. Building geometry that stays parametric and editable lets you explore design iterations and work deeply integrated into your existing files; V2 unlocks a new level of productivity and joy in Rhino. See how Raven drives your existing Rhino plugins, writes new ones on the fly, or supercharges your Grasshopper work. Across architecture, marine engineering and yacht design, product design, mechanical engineering and beyond, let a conversation transform how you work in Rhino.

Speakers

• Moritz Rietschel is co-founder of Raven, building at the frontier of AI capabilities and CAD. His work builds on research at UC Berkeley from early 2024, bringing early LLMs into CAD as AI-collaborative tools with Prof. Kyle Steinfeld and robotic fabrication with Prof. Simon Schleicher. Moritz has lectured internationally on AI-based creative tools, published at ACADIA and the IJAC journal, hosted workshops at MIT and Tongji, and contributed to international research conferences.
• Philipp Hölzenbein is co-founder of Raven. He studied Architecture at TU Munich and began his career as an architect before moving to the Boston Consulting Group, where he spent four years focusing on energy infrastructure and AI projects. Motivated by the gap between design intent, digital capability, and fabrication, Philipp began rethinking how AI can augment creativity in architecture and design.

Free registration...

Production-Ready Jewelry in Rhino 3D by Sabit

Production-Ready Jewelry in Rhino 3D

Master the professional jewelry 3D modeling workflow!

This comprehensive video, made by Authorized Resellers, Sabit, is designed specifically for working bench jewelers, 3D designers, and "switchers" who want to create flawless, manufacturable pieces in Rhino. Skip the abstract theory and learn how to engineer precise NURBS geometry for the real world.

You will learn how to design with proper tolerances, create functional mechanical parts (like clasps and hinges), account for metal shrinkage, and leave accurate spacing for gold/silver purity stamps. 

By the end of this course, you will have built a diverse, professional-grade 3D jewelry collection from scratch—including French pave and halo rings, flexible tennis bracelets, and intricate English clasp earrings—all 100% ready for flawless 3D printing and casting.

• Software requirements: Rhino (Bonus lessons include Materialise Magics for print prep and KeyShot for rendering).
• Format: 100% self-paced online video course with lifetime access.
• Date: October 25 (Also available completely on-demand)
• Duration: 12 hours
• Language: English

More information and registration...

Parametric Design with Grasshopper 1 by Navalapp

Parametric Design with Grasshopper 1 introduces practical parametric 3D modeling focused on yacht geometry, from Grasshopper fundamentals and interface and module assembly to creating and refining NURBS surfaces. 

You will learn to build clean, functional definitions, control relationships between geometric elements, and use parameters to adjust dimensions, proportions, and shapes as a design evolves. 

Through hands-on exercises such as modeling a cockpit, floor liner, bathing platform, sheer line, hull-side and bow surfaces, and a hardtop, you'll learn a workflow that combines Grasshopper with Rhino. By the end, you'll be able to parametrically construct the center-console boat geometry demonstrated in the course and continue developing your own definitions.

Tutorial Format: Videos

Language: English

Level: Beginner

Subtitles: English, French, Italian, Spanish

More information and registration...

RhinoArtisan 7.0: The AI Release

 

RhinoArtisan 7 is now available! This isn't simply an update: It brings agentic AI, organic modeling, advanced stone settings, smarter pavé, real-time rendering, automation, and manufacturing tools into one complete jewelry workflow. Work with AI inside RhinoArtisan or connect Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other agents directly to the real tools you use to design, price, check, and produce each piece. 

Check out the list of new features...

Try RhinoArtisan 7 now...

Online training: Maritime Hull Design and Fairing - New editions in October and November 2026

Online Training - Maritime Hull Design and Fairing

New editions in October and November 2026

Rapid Hull Modeling for Ships / Yachts / Workboats / Multihulls

Class-A Fairing – Final Design – Fairing for Production – Hull Optimization – Reverse Engineering – Hull from GA/ Lines-Plan – Advanced Analysis – Modeling Strategies – Developable Hulls

Rhino enables accurate, flexible, and fair vessel hull design with the Rapid Hull Modeling Methodology.

Naval architect Gerard Petersen from RhinoCentre developed this method in collaboration with other marine industry professionals. After years of providing training and services to leading companies in the marine industry worldwide, RhinoCentre developed three unique training modules to guide you in modeling, fairing, and reverse engineering vessel hull shapes.

Three training modules are covered in four two-hour live training sessions. Between the live sessions, you practice the exercises through self-study with instructional videos and written exercises.

Sign up now for the October & November editions...

D5 Lite for Rhino: Real-Time Visualization and AI-Assisted Design Exploration

D5 Lite for Rhino brings AI-assisted exploration and real-time visualization directly into the Rhino design workflow, letting designers evaluate ideas while their models are still evolving.

Built for Rhino 8 on Windows, D5 Lite supports two complementary ways of working. AI Generation uses the current Rhino view as a basis for exploring visual directions through presets, prompts, and reference images, helping designers investigate possibilities before fully developing them in 3D. Real-Time Rendering visualizes the actual Rhino geometry with PBR materials, lighting, shadows, and environmental conditions, allowing designers to evaluate the decisions already present in the model.

Together, they create an iterative workflow between modeling and visualization:

Model → Explore → Evaluate → Refine

Designers can adjust geometry in Rhino, examine the result, and continue refining the model rather than waiting until the design is finished to begin visualization. Materials, lighting, Geo Sky settings, and D5 proxy models can also remain associated with the Rhino project as it develops.

When you need more advanced visualization or presentation output, you can continue from D5 Lite into D5 Render, carrying forward the visual work established during design development.

D5 Lite for Rhino is currently available in Beta and is installed through D5 Launcher.

Complete info...

Webinar: Topography & Grading Tools with RhinoLands

Working with terrain in Rhino?

Join this free webinar to see how RhinoLands—Rhino + Lands Design — adds dedicated tools for topography, grading, and earthwork calculations directly inside Rhino.

Starting from contour lines, points, or other terrain data, we’ll show how to create and reshape a 3D terrain, define slopes and elevations, generate cut-and-fill operations, and calculate earthwork volumes.

This session is for Rhino users in architecture, civil engineering, urban design, planning, and landscape architecture.

September 29, 2026 — 17:00 CEST 

Free registration for the webinar...

Rhino User Webinar: Rhino to KeyShot - New recorded webinar now available!

The recording of our Rhino and KeyShot webinar is now available on YouTube.

In this session, Garin Gardiner from KeyShot and Aman Agrawal, founder of Cademy & CreativeMutation, present a practical workflow for using Rhino, Grasshopper, and KeyShot in product design and visualization.

The webinar covers how to prepare a Rhino model for rendering, import it into KeyShot, apply materials, and set up the scene. It also includes examples of using Grasshopper to create complex surface and hole patterns more efficiently.

The session provides a useful overview of how these tools combine in a product design workflow, from model preparation to final visualization.

Watch the video...

More Rhino User Webinars...

Join Hispanic design innovators on September 24

   

Digital Design Community | Autumn Event 2026

September 24, 2026, 6:00 PM-8:30 PM EDT

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

7 World Trade Center

250 Greenwich St

New York, NY 10007

Join the Digital Design Community, SOM Arquitectos, SketchPro, and Joaquín Tobar Martínez for an evening exploring innovation, technical craft, and representation in design technology in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. The event features three distinct presentations on AI workflow, product innovation, and digital fabrication led by Hispanic practitioners. Learn about emerging tools, celebrate Hispanic leadership in tech, and network with peers from across the industry. Open to all architects, designers, and tech enthusiasts!

Details and registration...

food4Rhino webinar: Kova PedSim - A Socially-Driven Pedestrian Simulation for Grasshopper3D (September 16, 2026 at 5 PM CEST)

food4Rhino webinar

Kova PedSim - A Socially-Driven Pedestrian Simulation for Grasshopper3D

September 16, 2026 at 5 PM CEST

People are at the heart of every architecture and design project, yet predicting how they will move through and experience that environment remains a fundamental challenge. 

In this webinar, Puja Bhagat and Jonathan Wong introduce Kova PedSim, a socially driven, agent-based pedestrian simulation plugin for Grasshopper that brings human behavior into the design process from the earliest stages. Rather than treating pedestrian analysis as a final validation step, Kova PedSim enables designers to explore how movement, social interactions, and spatial experiences evolve alongside their design. 

Through a live demonstration, attendees will learn how Kova PedSim's simulation engines can model pedestrian movement across urban and architectural scales, generate meaningful analytical outputs, and integrate seamlessly into parametric workflows. 

Speakers

• Puja Bhagat is a computational designer who holds an M.Arch in Emergent Technologies and Design from the Architectural Association and a B.Arch from Penn State University. Her work bridges design, simulation, and behavior to support more informed, human-centered design decisions. By integrating the physical and digital realms, she develops context-specific and dynamically adaptive solutions that foster interconnected spaces.
• Jonathan Wong is a computational designer who holds an M.Arch in Emergent Technologies and Design from the Architectural Association, and a B.Arch and a B.S. in Mathematics from Penn State University. His work focuses on developing computational workflows and digital tools to enable architects and designers to make informed, data-driven decisions at every stage of the design process. He is particularly interested in transforming complex analytical methods into intuitive tools that support better design outcomes.

Free registration...

Rhino User Webinar: From Footscan to Individual Shoelast - New recorded webinar now available!

 

Interested in digital orthopedic shoemaking workflows but missed the live webinar? You can now watch it on YouTube!

In this recorded webinar, master orthopedic shoemaker Martin Jaeger demonstrates how he uses Rhino 8 and custom-built Grasshopper scripts to transform a 3D foot scan into a fully individualized shoe last with integrated orthopedic correction.

The session covers the complete workflow, from cleaning and preparing the foot scan to generating and adjusting the last geometry, checking dimensions, and exporting production-ready models for milling or 3D printing.

It’s a practical introduction to how parametric tools can help shoemakers and orthopedic technicians move from traditional manual processes to a faster, more repeatable digital workflow.

Watch the video...

More Rhino User Webinars...

Arch-e - The AI Decision Assistant for Rhino

Developed by TwinMaster, Arch-e is the AI Decision Assistant for Rhino.

Better questions. Better decisions. Better buildings. Just Ask Arch-e.

TwinMaster's Arch-e is an AI decision intelligence platform for architects, engineers, computational designers, and contractors. Arch-e works with Rhino to help professionals analyze designs, evaluate alternatives, optimize competing priorities, and make better decisions—faster.

Unlike AI tools focused primarily on generating geometry or automating individual tasks, Arch-e reasons across the many interconnected considerations that determine whether a design actually works.

One Design. Multiple Objectives.

Arch-e transforms design and project information into an intelligent digital twin and can evaluate multiple performance objectives simultaneously, including:

• Cost and quantities
• Embodied carbon
• Energy and building performance
• Daylight
• Code and compliance
• Constructability
• Engineering performance
• Risk
• Site and contextual conditions
• Operational performance
• and other project-specific KPIs, plus many more!

Instead of analyzing these considerations independently, Arch-e evaluates their relationships, identifies competing priorities, and helps teams determine the best overall design solution.

Complete details and download on food4Rhino...

Upcoming Cademy Rhino and Grasshopper Online Courses

Cademy has announced new dates for their upcoming Rhinoceros and Grasshopper online training sessions.

Whether you’re looking to deepen your skills or explore advanced workflows, these courses are designed to help you master computational design tools.

• Rhinoceros Masterclass
  Price: 395 EUR
  Oct 17-18, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 CET
  Nov 28-29, Sat-Sun | 07:00 to 14:00 PST
  Dec 5-6, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 PST
   
• Grasshopper Masterclass
  Price: 395 EUR
  Oct 24-25, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 PST
  Nov 14-15, Sat-Sun | 07:00 to 14:00 PST
  Dec 19-20, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 CET
  
  
• Computational Design Workshop
  Price: 595 EUR
  Nov 7-8, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 CET
  Dec 5-6, Sat-Sun | 07:00 to 14:00 PST 

• Ad Parametric Texture Workshop
  Price: 495 EUR
  Nov 14-15, Sat-Sun | 08:00 to 15:00 CET

• KeyShot Masterclass
  Price: 395 EUR
  Dec 19-20, Sat-Sun | 07:00 to 14:00 CET

Complete details and registration...

 

Rhino Developer Meeting Barcelona (September 25, 2026) - last two weeks to register

Rhino Developer Meeting at IAAC Barcelona

September 25, 2026

Put together by McNeel Europe, Anomaly Build, and Sweden Design Computing.

Hosted by IAAC (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia).

If you're into Rhino, Grasshopper, RhinoCommon, Python, rhino3dm, Rhino.Inside, Compute, Hops, SubD, the Code Editor... basically anything in the Rhino universe, this is your people. A full day of live coding, real talk from developers, and plenty of coffee.

Why you should come

• Watch real experts live-code and show how they actually work, not just polished slides.
• Deep dive into Rhino's dev tools and everything new in the ecosystem.
• Get inspired by folks working in architecture, BIM, landscape design, 3D printing, robotic milling, environmental analysis, and more.
• Hear the latest on where Rhino and Grasshopper are headed.
• Hang out, swap ideas, and grab a drink with the community — coffee breaks, lunch, and networking drinks are all included.

Who's talking

• Luis E. Fraguada — McNeel
• Iliana Papadopoulou — Reope
• Alexander Schiftner — ShapeDiver
• David Andres Leon — IAAC
• Verena Vogler — McNeel Europe
• Keyan Rahimzadeh — VIA
• Vasiliki Fragkia — infrared.city / IAAC
• Andrew le Bihan — McNeel

And don't miss the Pecha Kucha talks — fast, punchy 20x20 presentations from the community.

Big thanks to our sponsors: ShapeDiver, Raven, Motif and reer.

Grab your ticket

• General Admission: €95 (+VAT), full day + food + drinks
• Student ticket: €50 (+VAT), same deal