As a student, you will probably want both. There is very little overlap between the two.

Rhino is a 3D modeling tool that really kills competition in creating smooth blobism.

Autocad is/was de facto tool every office in universe uses for anything from modeling to creating construction documents. It's being replaced by Revit in offices. I see no use whatsoever for a student to work in revit. Anyone else is free to correct me.

I also have no clue as to what Rhino benefit is outside of creating mostly unbuildable objects. No clue...

I replied because I usually feel bad for buried questions noone bothered to respond to.

You'll need both in my opinion. In school (just graduated) I would use Rhino most of the time and then occasionally jump into Autocad for some 2d work. I would also create some 2d drawings in Rhino also.

The benefit of Rhino is that you can create almost anything you can conceive of, you won't be as limited by what the program can or cannot do. I found Revit frustrating and generally not compatible with being creative although BIM is a time saver and keeps things organized. I think there is a Rhino Structure now that has some BIM capabilities but not sure.

i think the question should be maya vs. rhino.

I don't know if I'd agree with the lack of overlap between the two. Autocad and Rhino aren't all that different to learn; once you've learned the processes and concepts of one one (at least through using typed commands), the other becomes easier. I learned AutoCAD in R12 (hooray DOS), and was able to easily alias similar Rhino commands/shortcuts to be more AutoCAD-like (in addition to having all the great object-manipulation and analysis tools and whatnot). I think it could work the other way as well, at least for basic things. IIRC, Rhino was created by a former Autodesk distributor, and it actually seems a lot closer in many ways to AutoCAD than other modeling programs I've tried (Max? Even Sketchup?).

They have their different strengths; AutoCAD is stronger in annotation systems and layouts, while Rhino is a lot stronger and more flexible on the modeling end. Plus, scripting in Rhino seems to be a lot more powerful and easier (VBscript isn't that hard to learn, and if you'd rather not learn it there's Grasshopper) - this can save you tons of time, and is probably the more valuable skill set to have in terms of where things are going.

Ultimately, you'll want both (as well as BIM, which is conceptually different); fortunately, you'll have a lot of flexibility to use all of them in one capacity or another, and figure out which works best for what you're doing. If you're starting from scratch, there's quite a bit of overlap of concepts, so learning one will probably help you in the other(s).

Revit might, I dont know.....prepare you for the real world

if you want a real job in the real world, learn Revit and AutoCad...if you want to jerk off Greg Lynn, learn Rhino

I use autocad [or, more often Microstation these days] for 2d and Rhino for 3d. There is complete interoperability between the twain. Rhino can read and write almost any file type we use. For example, back in the day I would even use it as a bridge from 3dsMax to Maya.

I think the advantage of AutoCAD is that everyone in the US uses it. That's about it, but it is a hefty advantage to have every consultant on the same page in terms of file reciprocity.

The advantage of Rhino is that it's incredibly intuitive, easily customizable and ridiculously open. It can 'talk', as I said, to almost any program we use. You can change the aliases to align with AutoCAD if you wish. Also, the plug in known as grasshopper is free and incredibly intuitive to use [unlike Bentley's Generative Component's for Microstation which requires a bit of knowledge of scripting].

I would say, learn both. And get V-Ray for Rhino and you'll have almost a complete package for undergrad. The Adobe Suite is a no-brainer and it's been out for mac for almost a decade.

If you're in grad school... that's another story. They might require you to learn GC or Catia or SolidWorks or Digital Project, and those [at least to my subpar facility] take some time to learn. Revit is super super easy to learn, so I wouldn't worry about it at all. You could learn that in a day if you had to.

Here's some links that may help:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/

http://www.rhino3d.com/

http://www.gehrytechnologies.com/

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/GenerativeComponents/

Sorry I'm late to this party.

IMHO, the correct answer is D. All of the Above.
Chances are you'll need some part of all of these tools to get your design from concept-in-your-head to built reality.

I also came to Rhino after AutoCAD (using the tricks a few people have mentioned: aliasing Rhino commands to the shortcuts i was used to in Acad). I think of Rhino as AutoCAD with much better 3D capabilities and slightly worse annotation. Rhino kind of used to *suck* for making 2D drawings (construction docs), but it's pretty much caught up to AutoCAD in the last few years.

And recently it's trying to catch up to Revit. see rhinobim.com.

mdler and rustystuds: hey, your favorite band sucks! (i think if you knew Rhino better you'd talk less shit about it.)

Alright, what was the original question? autocad vs rhino on a mac... uh, both. But I'd run them in a native windows partition (what is that, bootcamp?), as I don't think the ported versions are feature-equivalent yet. I know there wasn't a grasshopper for mac a few weeks ago and none on the horizon.

it did not sound like many of you had used rhino or maya...

rhino is exactly like autocad but actually makes 3d modeling easy. it takes more skill to make blogs in rhino than it does to make precisely measured orthogonal models. maya makes the aforementioned and reviled blobs. but maya and rhino work hand in glove together. make the measured model in rhino. add the curvilinear in maya. many big firms use both. as f9r rendering, i say maxwell or rhino. mentalray for maya.

rhino is exactly like autocad but actually makes 3d modeling easy. it takes more skill to make blobs in rhino than it does to make precisely measured orthogonal models. maya makes the aforementioned and reviled blobs. but maya and rhino work hand in glove together. make the measured model in rhino. add the curvilinear in maya. many big firms use both. as for rendering, i say maxwell or rhino. mentalray for maya.

both; and do the windows versions instead, on bootcamp (or vmware if you're not too picky)

you'll use rhino a lot more, as autocad makes one want to kill oneself.

both and all of the above. but importantly, you should consider buying the student version of rhino or get a copy if the school is handing them out. I say this for two reasons.

First, as noted above, rhino is very much like autocad with respect to basic cad skills, which are in large part transferable between the two. But rhino also allows for fast, intuitive 3d modeling at the speed of thought (like sketchup) but is way, way, way more flexible and powerful than sketchup (and for all modeling, not just blobs) -- add the grasshopper plugin, tsplines and vray and there is not much you cannot do in rhino. autocad is making great strides now in becoming a more flexible 3d modeling app but (i think) still feels more cumbersome than rhino for concept design. if you want an intuitive, fast autodesk 3d modeler, go to the autodesk labs website and download the free inventor fusion app if it is still available. but back to rhino, consider getting the vray plugin in. vray is one of the three industry standard render engines which you'll probably use both in school and professionally. It is used in sketchup, rhino, and 3dsmax (i think now maya as well) so learning this one render engine covers you no matter which of the dominant modeling apps you use.

second, if you buy the student license of rhino for $195, when you graduate it automatically converts to a full commercial license. this is important b/c when you graduate, you'll have opportunities to do freelance work and and competitions and you'll want licensed software. rhino gets you about 80-90% the functionality of autocad but for a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost if you pay the student licensing fee. then for the 2d drafting, you can supplement with the free version of doublecad or siemens solid edge 2d or dassault systemes' draftsight.

also fyi, if you want photoshop or cs, it is also worth getting the student version b/c you can move to the pro version for just the upgrade cost. i did this and saved over 40% off the cost of cs design premium and 80% off rhino so i have legit copies of industry standard software for freelance work now for a little less than 40% of the retail cost if i waited to get them after graduating

I'm super-late coming into this thread, but I agree that both programs are pretty much a requirement for any architecture student today, along with Adobe Creative Suite.

I'm in my second year of my M.Arch program, but I learned how to use AutoCAD way before entering architecture school. My only previous 3D experience was a couple of open-source subdivision modelers that served no purpose for architecture school. SketchUp provided a good start in the 3D CAD field, and its simplicity was great, but I've since retired it from my arsenal.

If you know how to use AutoCAD, learning Rhino will be a cinch...I guarantee it. I'm a command-line power user when it comes to AutoCAD, so having that kind of functionality in Rhino made me feel right at home. I haven't seen too many people talking about this yet, but I'd like to see more comparisons of AutoCAD and Rhino on the 2D front (because with 3D, Rhino is unquestionably superior). A lot of firms, admittedly, still use AutoCAD, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is simply because it has been the standard for the last 20-odd years. It's hard to suddenly make a break from something like that and shift over to an entirely new program if the staff isn't trained in it. As AutoCAD is the standard, it has been specialized to no end, for all facets of the AEC sector (AutoCAD Architecture, Civil, MEP, GIS, etc.). AutoCAD's the king simply because it's got decades of development behind it.

This being said, as 2D line-by-line drawing tools go, I would take Rhino over AutoCAD any day of the week. Yes, it doesn't have things like detail libraries and its PaperSpace-equivalent system is still a bit of a mess, but what it lacks in these departments it makes up for it by having some of the richest and most intuitive toolsets for drawing of any program I've ever used. (I also like that I can immediately select a solid hatch without having to hunt for a selectable spot).

Suffice it to say I went from being an AutoCAD devotee to almost entirely utilizing Rhino/Illustrator for all my drawings. The combination of these two programs gives me practically infinite control and the ability to make amazing plans, sections, diagrams, and renderings.

Also, I highly recommend purchasing a student license of Rhino. 1) for the post-graduation upgrade, and 2) you have access to the Rhino 5 work-in-progress, which supports 64-bit systems and is faster, more stable, and more intuitive than Rhino 4. You can get it on novedge.com for $139, and that's really a price you can't beat. I recommend obtaining some (if not all) useful plugins for Rhino as well (don't buy them all at once, unless you've got the funds for it):

1) Grasshopper: node-driven parametric design. Sort of like visual scripting, but a must-have to make some amazing forms.
2) V-Ray: very fast, high quality ray-tracer rendering engine. Currently works on Rhino 4 only, but it should be in development for Rhino 5
3) Maxwell Render: unbiased physical rendering engine and light simulator. Stops rendering when you tell it to, so it can go for days and days. Its best results are nearly indistinguishable from photographs.
4) T-Splines: Organic surface modeling. Bridges the gap between NURBS and subdivision surface modeling, but insanely powerful. What Gaudi probably would have used if he were our age today. Can be integrated with Grasshopper.