Rhino

Rhino (Rhinoceros) is a 3D modeling program developed by Robert McNeel & Associates. It is built on NURBS geometry, so it can describe curved, free-form surfaces with mathematical precision. Besides architecture it is common in fields that demand exact form, such as industrial, jewelry, boat and footwear design.

Why architects use it

An undulating roof, a doubly curved facade or a complex shell structure can be modeled comfortably in Rhino and carried through to fabrication. Surfaces can be divided into panels, unrolled flat and exported for CNC cutting or 3D printing. Because it reads and writes a long list of file formats, it also acts as a bridge between other programs. Grasshopper, which ships with Rhino, brings parametric and algorithmic design into the same environment through visual programming, and that pairing is what makes Rhino so valued in design offices.

From a visualization point of view

Rhino has its own display and rendering tools, but presentation-quality images usually come from a render plugin or a real-time engine. NURBS surfaces are converted to meshes for rendering, so mesh settings matter: too coarse and curves look faceted, too fine and the model grows heavy. Simple settings for distant views and finer ones for close-ups are a good starting point. We compare Rhino with other modeling programs in our article on software used in architectural 3D modeling.