Does anyone use Rhino for Landscape design?

[Chunling Wu]

Hi,

I want to know does anybody try parametricism in landscape design with Rhino?

Can you recommend books about Rhino for architecture and landscape?

Thank you!

[David Barbarash]

My 2 cents:

 

I’ve messed around with Rhino a few times. I liked the CAD style interface and ease of laying out 2D linework to extrude into 3D objects. What I DIDN’T like was the reliance of NURBS based modeling. I believe that our work is better served with a solids modeler (like 3D Studio max, Cinema 4D, or Sketchup) as it’s more relatable to the way things are actually built and the modeling process (for all but Gehry style surfaces) seems to work better with CAD drawings. NURBS are great for things like product design and character animation, and file sizes tend to be smaller when compared to an equivalent solids modeler, but I just never saw the benefits for architectural visualization…

[David Barbarash]

I disagree. There are only two kinds of modeling software, solids and surface modelers. Surface modelers drape a surface over a series of splines or NURBS curves. Surface modelers draw faces between points in space. FormZ and SolidWorks are no different (mathmatically) than Max or Cinema4D.

[Chunling Wu]

Hi Joshua,

I noticed you are graduate student at Clemson. I will be a graduate student in this Fall as well. The reason I asked about software is I want to learn a software to accomplish my ideas to models in “artist” style like you said. Did you try abstract or bionics shape in your assignment before? (It doesn’t matter if Arch. or L Arch.) I’m learning Rhino coz those parametricism architecture models are almost done by it. But yes it fits in product design more than our field. So for my question, do you still recommend Bonzai3d?

[Chunling Wu]

Hi David,

I’m sorry I didn’t make clear on my questions. I agree with you on how CAD style works well in 2D linework and Rhino doesn’t look perfect for building design. But in addtion to design in realism, I’m also willing to learn different rendering for experimental design.

[Chunling Wu]

Thank you. 🙂 I’m not Clemson person although I applied it.

 

[Chunling Wu]

Not deeply touch people here. But yah…good idea, thanks 😉

[ida]

I’ve used Rhino for 2 years professionally. It’s like a dumbed down version of Autocad yet it’s like Sketchup on steroids, so it’s especially useful in the concept stage. The problem with Rhino is that it is hardly used in landscape and it’s a pain to convert the model to Sketchup or import a SkU model, but I think if more firms adopt it, it will benefit our profession as a whole. I know it’s an industry standard for architects, so it will make working with the architects more easy.

 

Someone with parametric skills is rare, and if they know parametric, then they probably want to do those crazy designs which only a handful of firms do. What I like about parametrics is that you can easily change one variable and it changes the entire design. So I can imagine it might be useful in DD or CD stage. To be honest though, I doubt parametric design will ever gain traction in our field because it’s too difficult, too specialized (might need to add another year or two to the school curriculum devoted just to parametrics), and most of the time we deal with a limited budget and an unpredictable thing called nature.

 

I don’t know any books on Rhino, but thankfully there are quite a lot of online tutorials out there and the Command Help in Rhino is very useful. Also if you’re interested in parametrics, the Grasshopper website has links to a bunch of tutorials and downloadable pdfs

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