Rhinoceros (typically abbreviated Rhino or Rhino3D) is a

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

3D computer graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called Computer-generated imagery, CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional Computer-generated imagery, computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian coor ...

and

computer-aided design Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

(CAD) application software that was developed by TLM, Inc, dba Robert McNeel & Associates, an American, privately held, and employee-owned company that was founded in 1978. Rhinoceros geometry is based on the

non-uniform rational B-spline Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) is a mathematical model using B-spline, basis splines (B-splines) that is commonly used in computer graphics for representing curves and Surface (mathematics), surfaces. It offers great flexibility and pr ...

(NURBS) mathematical model, which focuses on producing mathematically precise representation of curves and freeform surfaces in

computer graphics Computer graphics deals with generating images and art with the aid of computers. Computer graphics is a core technology in digital photography, film, video games, digital art, cell phone and computer displays, and many specialized applications. ...

(in contrast to a

polygon mesh In 3D computer graphics and solid modeling, a polygon mesh is a collection of , s and s that defines the shape of a polyhedron, polyhedral object's surface. It simplifies Rendering (computer graphics), rendering, as in a wire-frame model. The fac ...

mathematical model). Rhinoceros is used for computer-aided design (CAD),

computer-aided manufacturing Computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) also known as computer-aided modeling or computer-aided machining is the use of software to control machine tools in the manufacturing of work pieces. This is not the only definition for CAM, but it is the most ...

(CAM),

rapid prototyping Rapid prototyping is a group of techniques used to quickly fabricate a scale model of a physical part or assembly using three-dimensional computer aided design ( CAD) data. Construction of the part or assembly is usually done using 3D printing ...

3D printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

and

reverse engineering Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

in industries including

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

industrial design Industrial design is a process of design applied to physical Product (business), products that are to be manufactured by mass production. It is the creative act of determining and defining a product's form and features, which takes place in adva ...

(e.g.,

automotive design Automotive design is the process of developing the appearance (and to some extent the ergonomics) of motor vehicles, including automobiles, motorcycles, trucks, buses, coaches, and vans. The functional design and development of a modern mot ...

, watercraft design),

product design Product design is the process of creating new Product (business), products for businesses to sell to their customers. It involves the generation and development of ideas through a systematic process that leads to the creation of innovative products ...

(e.g.,

jewelry design Jewellery design is the art or profession of designing and creating jewellery. It is one of civilization's earliest forms of decoration, dating back at least 7,000 years to the oldest-known human societies in Indus Valley Civilization, Mesopota ...

) as well as for

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

and

graphic design Graphic design is a profession, academic discipline and applied art that involves creating visual communications intended to transmit specific messages to social groups, with specific objectives. Graphic design is an interdisciplinary branch of ...

. Rhinoceros is developed for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. A visual

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

add-on for Rhino,

Grasshopper Grasshoppers are a group of insects belonging to the suborder Caelifera. They are amongst what are possibly the most ancient living groups of chewing herbivorous insects, dating back to the early Triassic around 250 million years ago. Grassh ...

, is developed by Robert McNeel & Associates.

Overview

Characteristics

Rhinoceros is primarily a freeform surface modeler that uses the

NURBS Non-uniform rational basis spline (NURBS) is a mathematical model using basis splines (B-splines) that is commonly used in computer graphics for representing curves and surfaces. It offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analy ...

mathematical model. Rhinoceros's application architecture and open SDK make it modular and enable a user to customize the interface and create custom commands and menus. Since version 7, Rhinoceros has improved real-time rendering abilities for improved lighting and shading.

File formats

Robot image created in Rhinoceros 3D and rendered in Flamingo

The Rhinoceros file format (.3DM) is useful for the exchange of NURBS geometry. The Rhino developers started the openNURBS Initiative to provide computer graphics software developers the tools to accurately transfer 3-D geometry between applications. An open-source toolkit, openNURBS includes the 3DM file format specification, documentation, C++ source code libraries and .NET 2.0 assemblies to read and write the file format on supported platforms – Windows, Windows x64, Mac, and Linux.

Compatibility

Rhinoceros offers compatibility with other software as it supports over 30 CAD file formats for importing and exporting. The following

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve c ...

image files An image file format is a file format for a digital image. There are many formats that can be used, such as JPEG, PNG, and GIF. Most formats up until 2022 were for storing 2D images, not 3D ones. The data stored in an image file format may be c ...

are natively supported (without the use of external plug-ins): The following CAD file formats are supported with use of external plug-ins: * 3DPDF *

ACIS The 3D ACIS Modeler (ACIS) is a geometric modeling kernel developed by Spatial Corporation (formerly Spatial Technology), part of Dassault Systèmes. ACIS is used by software developers in industries such as computer-aided design, computer-ai ...

CATIA CATIA (, an acronym of computer-aided three-dimensional interactive application) is a multi-platform software suite for computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), 3D modeling and product li ...

v4, v5, v6 * CGR *

Inventor An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea, or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

* JT *

Parasolid Parasolid is a geometric modeling kernel originally developed by Shape Data Limited, now owned and developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software. It can be licensed by other companies for use in their 3D computer graphics software product ...

- import * PLMXML *

Creo Parametric Creo Parametric, formerly known, together with Creo Elements/Pro, as Pro/Engineer (commonly referred to as Pro E) and Wildfire, is a solid modeling or computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CA ...

Solid Edge Solid Edge is a 3D computer-aided design (CAD), parametric feature and synchronous technology solid modeling software. It runs on Microsoft Windows and provides solid modeling, assembly modelling and 2D orthographic view functions for mechani ...

Siemens NX NX, formerly known as "Unigraphics", is CAD/CAM/ CAE software, which has been owned since 2007 by Siemens Digital Industries Software. In 2000, Unigraphics purchased SDRC I-DEAS and began an effort to integrate aspects of both software packages ...

When opening CAD file formats not in its native .3dm file format, Rhinoceros will convert the geometry into its native format; when importing a CAD file, the geometry is added to the current file. When Autodesk

AutoCAD AutoCAD is a 2D and 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software application developed by Autodesk. It was first released in December 1982 for the CP/M and IBM PC platforms as a desktop app running on microcomputers with internal graphics control ...

's file format changes (see DWG file format for more information), the

Open Design Alliance Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating software development kits (SDKs) for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for CAD, BIM, and Mechanical industries including .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Aut ...

reverse engineers the file format to allow these files to be loaded by other vendors' software. Rhinoceros's import and export modules are actually plug-ins, so they can be easily updated via a service release. Rhinoceros Service Releases (SR) are frequent and freely downloadable. Rhinoceros 5 SR10 can import and export DWG/DXF file formats up to version 2014.

Scripting and programming

Rhinoceros supports two

scripting languages In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

, Rhinoscript (based on

VBScript VBScript (Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition) is a deprecated programming language for scripting on Microsoft Windows using Component Object Model (COM), based on classic Visual Basic and Active Scripting. It was popular with system admi ...

) and

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (prog ...

(v5.0+ and Mac). It also has an SDK and a complete plug-in system.

plugins

Food4Rhino
is the main hosting platform for plugins and add-ons for Rhinoceros 3D.

Orca3D

Orca3D is a plug-in for Rhinoceros 3D used in

naval architecture Naval architecture, or naval engineering, is an engineering discipline incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the engineering design process, shipbuilding, maintenance, and op ...

. It adds tools for

hull Hull may refer to: Structures * The hull of an armored fighting vehicle, housing the chassis * Fuselage, of an aircraft * Hull (botany), the outer covering of seeds * Hull (watercraft), the body or frame of a sea-going craft * Submarine hull Ma ...

, deck, and

superstructure A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstruct ...

modeling. It tests and tracks

hydrostatics Hydrostatics is the branch of fluid mechanics that studies fluids at hydrostatic equilibrium and "the pressure in a fluid or exerted by a fluid on an immersed body". The word "hydrostatics" is sometimes used to refer specifically to water and ...

, stability analysis,

computational fluid dynamics Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical analysis and data structures to analyze and solve problems that involve fluid dynamics, fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required ...

, weight and

center of gravity In physics, the center of mass of a distribution of mass in space (sometimes referred to as the barycenter or balance point) is the unique point at any given time where the weighted relative position of the distributed mass sums to zero. For ...

. Orca3D is commonly used for designing yachts and commercial vessels and integrates directly with Rhino's modeling environment.

Grasshopper 3D

Grasshopper 3D Grasshopper is a visual programming language and environment that runs within the Rhinoceros 3D computer-aided design (CAD) application. The program was created by David Rutten, at Robert McNeel & Associates. Programs are created by dragging comp ...

is a node-based

procedural modeling Procedural modeling is an umbrella term for a number of techniques in computer graphics to create 3D models and textures from sets of rules that may be easily changed over time. L-Systems, fractals, and generative modeling are procedural modelin ...

plugin that runs within Rhinoceros 3D, allowing users to create

parametric model In statistics, a parametric model or parametric family or finite-dimensional model is a particular class of statistical models. Specifically, a parametric model is a family of probability distributions that has a finite number of parameters. Defi ...

VisualARQ

VisualARQ is a

Building Information Modeling Building information modeling (BIM) is an approach involving the generation and management of digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of buildings or other physical assets and facilities. BIM is supported by vario ...

(BIM) plugin that adds parametric architectural objects, dynamic documentation tools,

integration, and IFC import/export for enhanced

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader de ...

with other BIM platforms.

Jewelry plugins

MatrixgoldPanther 3DCrayoo
are plugins to help in

jewellery design Jewellery design is the art or profession of designing and creating jewellery. It is one of civilization's earliest forms of adornment, decoration, dating back at least 7,000 years to the oldest-known human societies in Indus Valley Civilization ...

for Rhinoceros 3D.

Rendering

Rhino Render
is a built in

rendering engine Rendering is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from input data such as 3D models. The word "rendering" (in one of its senses) originally meant the task performed by an artist when depicting a real or imag ...

that does

real-time rendering Real-time computer graphics or real-time rendering is the sub-field of computer graphics focused on producing and analyzing images in real time. The term can refer to anything from rendering an application's graphical user interface ( GUI) to ...

in Rhinoceros 3D.

3rd party rendering plugins

* Enscape *

Octane Render Octane Render is an unbiased rendering application with real-time capability developed by graphics software company OTOY Inc. Octane Render was the first commercially available unbiased path-tracer that fully utilized the GPU, allowing users ...

Maxwell Render Maxwell Render is an unbiased 3D render engine, developed by Next Limit Technologies in Madrid, Spain. This stand-alone software is used in the film, animation, and VFX industry, as well as in architectural and product design visualization. It o ...

* V-Ray * Bella Render * Thea Render * Keyshot
Maverick Render
* D5 Render
Fluidray

Iray
ref>

References

External links

* {{Authority control 3D graphics software Computer-aided design software Computer-aided design software for Windows