I've been wanting to dust off my rhino skills for a while. Not really because I plan on using it in the office (my time and expertise is better spent on CD & CA) but because I know the office's ownership group will hire some flashy GH kid one day and then wonder why what was produced for school did not translate well into real projects.

idiots can use rhino to design dumb stuff, but it's also an excellent and very flexible piece of software for serious work. some of the facade consultants i've worked with use it to rationalize the geometry of the facade and develop assembly details.

also i work in a market that involves doing lots of concept stage renderings and studies which are much easier to model well in rhino than revit, just faster and cleaner. when you know only one out of 5 schemes is going to move forward and get worked out it's a waste to put more than the minimum effort into generating study models. rhino is good for that (sketchup too, but more limited in use)

@midlander, are you referring to massing studies involving intricate geometry that Revit couldn't handle? I am curious as to what your market is. High-rise, sports facilities?

high rise towers, mostly but sometimes transportation facilities. it's the combination of modeling complicated geometry quickly and integrating fairly detailed patterns and decorative ideas to do facade studies even when very basic design parameters haven't been fixed that makes it useful. i'd hesitate to say revit can't model them, but i have no idea how you would model it in revit starting from a blank file - you need to have a framework to organize the work in revit. it takes extra steps which aren't necessary until the design is settled and ready to start documenting.

When you do SD on high rise do you use energy modelling tools like Ladybug or do you deem that this is not necessary like archanonymous suggested below?

like archanonymous we've never used them - the mep consultants do the energy modeling using specialized software. sometimes we do vegetables crude daylighting analyses of interior spaces and sunlight studies on facades. tbh they aren't influential on the design because no one knows what to make of the information nor how reliably it will relate to the real conditions. when done it's usually just to decorate a report and give the impression the design achieves some hypothetical optimum of performance. i prefer to omit these kind of bs studies from my reports - no clients have ever had anything to say about them anyway.

*vegetables = very

i would never consider being able to do this modeling a useful skill for a young designer because noone on the team knows how to use the information generated, or what should be targeted for a given project. when i've seen it done it was usually on a revit model using third party software - i don't know what one.

I’m very curious about rhino to revit workflow. I need to make time to explore it. I can do DD in revit just fine but not SD, and even then, nothing DD makes it into the tonal Bim file anyways so it’s really not worth the effort.

Rhino 7 was just released with "Rhino Inside" which lets you run an instance of Rhino INSIDE of Revit for easier interoperability. It's pretty great.

Learning about Rhino Inside was what actually triggered me to start this thread.

i haven't used rhino inside yet, very interested to learn more about it too.

I wont confirm it, but I might have just spent the last hour reading into RInside and building a case for office purchase of R7. Will install trial and run real tests over the next few weeks to see if it will work with our office workflow.

would love to know how it works for you. It feels like it is still a bit beta version, but that is only my ignorance speaking.

@Non Sequitur, what type and phase of work do you plan to use Rhino for?

@ Will. Definitely still "in progress" but much better than trading geometry via .DWG (though I still do that a lot honestly) or even Proving Ground Conveyor. I think it will improve over time as well - McNeel tends to improve their products whilst Autodesk improves their profits.

@Archanonymous would you mind sharing with us what kind of firm and what project type you have used Rhino in?

I'll keep this in mind Will. 

Tyth, my pov for Rhino is primarily SD to early DD. Our office's goal is to eventually move as many phases of a project into Revit but most of the senior staff here who make design decisions prefer over the shoulder watch while the junior models type exercise... so I'm looking for something that can function in a quick and dirty way like sketchup but is more powerful. Bonus is the ability to model custom one-off-shapes and intergrade into CD or CA type work too.

@Non Sequitur, do you also work on high-rise like midlander? How are you hoping to integrate Rhino into CD or CA?

I do high-rise commercial but has no plans to use rhino in that respect. Revit is well adapted for that. I’m looking at rhino as a SD replacement with upside that custom items, like trims, reveals, cladding conditions, can be modeled seamlessly into the revit model.

@tyth - I've worked at every type of firm you can imagine small to large, average to great, and used Rhino at every one of them. Been using it continually since Rhino version 3 in school. Current though is "starchitect" education, civic, museum projects, all phases through CA.

Revit sucks ass for design. If one's on the production side its OK.

I can imagine that running clash detection (if that's what you mean with intersections) and detailing is more practical to do in Revit. I believe that Rhino & Enscape would be a good combination for massing studies. I am wondering how smooth and thorough the early environmental analysis would be in Rhino compared to Revit. Have you had any experience in this?

Not clash detection.... material intersections, detailing, and integration of lighting/ coves/ diffusers into complex or other non-standard geometry. 

 Maybe some people here have had better experiences with engineers, but "clash detection" is not a helpful thing during design or documentation at my office because the engineering disciplines don't have the expertise needed to model their ducts and piping in the correct real-world location, unless your building is a dumb box. Clash detection is sometimes useful in CA when the contractor has a navis model that the design-build MEP contractors are referencing their shop-drawing level fabrication model into. Again, that's pretty rare.

According to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bskTiUdHxW0) Rhino 7 has clash detection, however I am confused as to whether consultants would also need to model MEP in Rhino, as that is likely to be even more rare.

Doesn't matter what software you use, clash detection is worthless if your entire consultant team isn't precise. They rarely are.

I've never used any of the Autodesk energy modeling tools. 

Ladybug is great as a helpful decision-making and early modeling tool. More precise and technical modeling tools become more useful later in the design process, and usually we hire specialists for that, or MEP/ Enclosure consultants provide the service. 

 Still, ladybug rarely tells you something you wouldn't know via a decade of practice and a careful reading of Sun, Wind, and Light.

Do you need to have advanced GH knowledge to be able to use the Ladybug tools? According to your experience how intuitive or simple to use are they?

No, just basic Grasshopper abilities. It is more intuitive than other energy sim dashboards I have seen.

i started my career with no special software skills, grew into a PA role focused, and later shifted into a concept and planning design role. i did need to spend some time catching up on software skills to make the change, but ultimately the opportunity depends more on design skills and the ability to present a strong idea. software is learnable and always comes second to the basic design skills you possess and interests you follow.

no one really gets pigeonholed and it would be silly to organize your start in the career on the false assumption that the direction you begin with determines everything. if you want to focus on design, be good at designing spaces and presenting an idea. the software won't really matter and if your office needs you to learn something to fit into the workflow you'll have the chance to learn it, as long as you have a good design sensibility and solid teamwork skills. those last two are by far the most important, but you can't quantify them on a resume.

that said, if you think you want to lead in design, definitely learn software that you enjoy using enough to support developing your ideas. in large firms the workflow will probably shift through every software suite according to the needs of different clients and preferences of the team.