Overview

McNeel's Rhino for Windows and Mac is the ultimate industrial design modeling solution, combining a powerful NURBS based engine with the ability to create, edit, analyze and translate complex shapes. With support for 3D digitizers and a large set of 3D entities there are no limits on complexity or size so engineers can focus completely on their designs without worrying about workarounds.

McNeel's Rhinoceros 3D is the go-to software for Industrial Designers, Architects and CAD experts with its powerful NURBS-based engine, giving you the capability of creating and editing complex shapes quickly and precisely. Rhino for Windows & Mac supports a range of geometries including polygons, curves, surfaces as well as point clouds - leaving no design challenge beyond reach. With this industrial design modeling software not only can complicated shapes be modeled directly but also acquired through 3D digitizers easily – all without any limits on complexity or size!

What's new

Rhino 8 brings new modeling tools like ShrinkWrap, a huge speed boost for Mac users, SubD Creases, PushPull workflows, better drafting tools, a more customizable User Interface, a faster Render engine, new Grasshopper data types, and much more!

ShrinkWrap - Turn Garbage To Gold

Create a watertight mesh around any geometry - open or closed meshes, NURBS geometry, SubD, and point clouds. Ideal for 3D printing.

ShrinkWrap is ideal for creating:

Meshes for 3D printing.
A solid union mesh from multiple objects.
A solid mesh from 3D scan data fragments.
Meshes without internal self-intersections.

Offset meshes for shelling.
Meshes from point clouds when reverse engineering.
Valid closed meshes from broken or often hard-to-repair geometry.

Modeling Simplified

Rhino 8 unlocks new modeling workflows — like PushPull — and adds intuitive new features to the Gumball, Automatic CPlanes, and more…
These new features make modeling more playful and accessible. Combining these tools reduces friction for common solid creation/editing tasks. This allows you to stay in single Perspective view while modeling.

				P
Modeling Simplified Rhino's model creation tools make it flexible, accurate, open, and very popular.	Auto CPlanes Smarter CPlanes automatically align to eligible selections.	Gumball The move, scale, rotate widget gets new grips for extending and extruding.	PushPull Grab a face and push or pull it, extruding or extending.	Inset New Options and support for Surfaces and Polysurface Faces.

SubD Creases

SubD Creases create a feature between a smooth and a sharp edge, without adding complexity to the SubD control net, great for making fillet-like features.

Accurate, organic modeling just got easier. Push and pull to explore complex, free-form shapes in realtime.
SubD objects are highly accurate and can be converted directly to manufacturable solids.
You can also convert scan or mesh data into SubD objects, then optionally to NURBS.

Built for Mac: Metal

Rhino for Mac is faster than ever, running natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, and using the Apple Metal display technology. The User-Interface on Mac is also now closer to its Windows sibling!
To use Metal, Rhino requires an Intel or Apple Silicon Mac that can run macOS Monterey 12.4 or later.


Built for Mac: Metal Blazingly fast 3D drawing, a massive speed boost for Mac users.	Universal App Rhino for Mac runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.	Window Layouts Customize, save, share, and restore your favorite interface layouts.	Layer Manager A complete rewrite, on Windows and Mac, including all new features.	Rendering: Fast Feedback We've updated the Cycles engine for faster, GPU-accelerated raytracing.

Clipping and Sectioning

Rhino 8 introduces a number of clipping and sectioning enhancements to help support various drafting and fabrication workflows.


Section Styles Use Section Styles to create section details of your model.	Selective Clipping Selective clipping and viewing depth.	Dynamic Vector Drawings Create dynamic vector drawings of clipping sections.	Clipped Views Use Clipping Planes Views in 2D Layouts.	Sectioning for Fabrication Extract section curves and slices for fabrication.

Presentation

Rhino 8 has updated the Cycles Render engine, smoothed out the UV Workflow, improved our procedural textures, added a display mode, and more…


Rendering: Fast Feedback We've updated the Cycles engine for faster, GPU-accelerated raytracing.	UV Mapping UV Mapping has been improved with a floating UV Editor, new unwrapping.	Procedural Textures Native, per-pixel procedural textures in raytraced and rendered modes.	Monochrome A clean, minimal Display Mode, perfect for showcasing architectural work.	Improved Rendering UI More compact, efficient, and interactive management and editing.

Grasshopper: Rhino Data Types

Rhino Data Types allow you to bake geometry with custom attributes, import more file formats, control blocks, use native materials in the display pipeline, create hatches and annotations, and many other expanded workflows…


Grasshopper: Object Attributes Manage Rhino object attributes directly from Grasshopper.	Grasshopper: Annotations Define the look of annotations in Grasshopper.	Grasshopper: Blocks Create block definitions and instances in Grasshopper.	Grasshopper: Live Baking Live update existing Rhino objects from Grasshopper.	Grasshopper: UserText Add user text to Rhino objects.

Rhino Refined

Hundreds of bugs were fixed, and new Linetypes were added, Mesh Booleans were improved, surface editing tools were enhanced, and more…


Linetypes Linetypes in Rhino 8 can draw stylized curves with both width and taper.	RefitTrim Take control of structure and continuity for well-made surface models.	Surface Fillets FilletSrf has a new UI with dynamic radius previews.	Window Layouts Customize, save, share, and restore your favorite interface layouts.	Supported File Formats Now supporting USD export, glTF, E57 in Rhino for Mac, Dynamic Blocks in DWGs

SectionTools Integrated Dynamic 3D Sectioning and 2D Drawings.	Reflected Ceiling Plans A reflected parallel projection viewport mode, perfect for RCPs.	Blocks The Block Manager is now more flexible and powerful.	Mesh Booleans Completely rewritten and more reliable Mesh Booleans.	Offset Offset can now create multiple closed regions.

Development Platform

Rhino 8 brings a new code editor, support for CPython and .NET 7, major improvements to our free SDKs, with API refinements, and some major new features that broaden and deepen the foundations of the geometry development platform

Scripting
Entirely new editor for Python 3 and C#, in Rhino and Grasshopper.

Code-Driven File IO
Read/write any format that Rhino supports entirely through code.

rhino3dm Rendering Assets
Read and write rendering assets from openNURBS or rhino3dm.

.NET 7
Target Microsoft .NET 7 on both Windows and Rhino for Mac.

RhinoCommon
New APIs for Shrinkwrap, Flair, Code-Driven File IO, and more...

And More

Rhino 8 adds a number of new command options.

Features

Rhino can create, edit, analyze, document, render, animate, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces and solids, subdivision geometry (SubD), point clouds, and polygon meshes. There are no limits on complexity, degree, or size beyond those of your hardware.

Special features include:

Uninhibited free-form 3-D modeling tools like those found only in high-end systems. Model any shape you can imagine.
Accuracy needed to design, prototype, engineer, analyze, and manufacture anything from an airplane to jewelry.
Compatibility with all your other design, drafting, CAM, engineering, analysis, rendering, animation, and illustration software.
Read and repair extremely challenging IGES files.
Accessible. So easy to learn and use that you can focus on design and visualization without being distracted by the software.
Fast, even on an ordinary laptop computer. No special hardware is needed.
Development platform for hundreds of specialty 3D products.
Affordable. Ordinary hardware. Short learning curve. Priced like other Windows software. No maintenance fees.
Cross-Platform: The world’s most versatile 3D modeler, available on Windows and macOS.

NOTE: Rhino for Mac does not contain all commands found in Rhino for Windows

Model Creation Tools

Points: Points, point clouds, point grid, extract from objects, mark (intersection, divide, draftangle, ends, closest, foci).
Curves: Line, polyline, polyline on mesh, free-form curve, circle, arc, ellipse, rectangle, polygon, helix, spiral, conic, TrueType text, point interpolation, control points (vertices), sketch.
Curves from other objects: Through points, through polyline, extend, continue curve, fillet, chamfer, offset, blend, arc blend, from two views, tween, cross section profiles, intersection, contour on NURBS surface or mesh, section on NURBS surface or mesh, border, silhouette, extract isoparm, extract curvature graph, projection, pullback, sketch, wireframe, detach trim, 2D drawings with dimensions and text, flatten developable surfaces.
Surfaces: From 3 or 4 points, from 3 or 4 curves, from planar curves, from network of curves, rectangle, deformable plane, extrude, ribbon, rule, loft with tangency matching, developable, sweep along a path with edge matching, sweep along two rail curves with edge continuity, revolve, rail revolve, tween, blend, patch, drape, point grid, heightfield, fillet, chamfer, offset, plane through points, TrueType text, Unicode (double-byte) text.
Solids: Box, sphere, cylinder, tube, pipe, cone, truncated cone, pyramid, truncated pyramid, ellipsoid, torus, extrude planar curve, extrude surface, cap planar holes, join surfaces, region, nonmanifold merge, TrueType text, Unicode (double-byte) text.
Meshes: From NURBS surfaces, from closed polyline, mesh face, plane, box, cylinder, cone, and sphere.
Rhino 8 adds dozens of refinements to existing tools and some new ones:

8 Modeling Simplified: Combine new tools to quickly sketch your idea in 3D.
PushPull: Grab a face and push or pull it, extruding or extending. PushPull speeds up modeling by using curves to add or remove volumes from existing surfaces.
Gumball: The move, scale, rotate widget gets new grips for extending and extruding.
SubD: SubD Creases, great for making fillet-like features.
Surface Fillets: FilletSrf has a new UI with dynamic radius previews.
Offset: Offset can now create multiple closed regions.

Editing

General Tools: Delete, delete duplicates, join, merge, trim, untrim, split, explode, extend, fillet, chamfer, object properties, history.
Transform Tools: Cut, copy, paste, move, rotate, mirror, scale, stretch, align, array, twist, bend, taper, shear, offset, orient, flow along curve, pull, project, boxedit, smash, squish.
Points and curves: Control points, edit points, handlebars, smooth, fair, change degree, add/remove knots, add kinks, rebuild, refit, match, simplify, change weight, make periodic, adjust end bulge, adjust seam, orient to edge, convert to arcs, a polyline, or line segments.
Surfaces: Control points, handlebars, change degree, add/remove knots, match, extend, merge, join, untrim, split surface by isoparms, rebuild, shrink, make periodic, Boolean (union, difference, intersection), unroll developable surfaces, array along curve on surface.
Solids: Fillet edges, extract surface, shell, Booleans (union, difference, intersection).
Meshes: Explode, join, weld, unify normals, apply to surface, reduce polygons.
Editing complex models in Rhino 8 is fast and easy:

Gumball: The move, scale, rotate widget gets new grips for extending and extruding.
Auto CPlanes: Smarter CPlanes automatically align to eligible selections.
Improved Mesh Booleans: Completely rewritten and more reliable Mesh Booleans.
RefitTrim: Take control of structure and continuity for well-made surface models.

Interface

User interface: Coordinate read-out, floating/dockable command area, pop-up recently-used commands, clickable command options, auto-complete command line, customizable pop-up commands, pop-up layer manager, synchronize views, camera-based view manipulation, perspective match image, configurable middle mouse button, customizable icons and user workspace, customizable pop-up toolbar, transparent toolbars, context-sensitive right-click menu, multiple monitor support, Alt key copy and OpenGL hardware support with antialiasing.
Construction aids: Unlimited undo and redo, undo and redo multiple, exact numeric input, units including feet and inches and fractions, .x, .y, .z point filters, object snaps with identifying tag, grid snaps, ortho, planar, named construction planes, next and previous construction planes, orient construction plane on curve, layers, layer filtering, groups, background bitmaps, object hide/show, show selected objects, select by layer, select front most, color, object type, last object, and previous selection set, swap hidden objects, object lock/unlock, unlock selected objects, control and edit points on/off, and points off for selected objects.
Rhino for Mac takes advantage of macOS user interface conventions.
Rhino 8’s User Interface is far more customizable, even on Mac, with:

Window Layouts: Customize, save, share, and restore your favorite interface layouts.
Layer Manager: A complete rewrite, on Windows and Mac, including all new features.
Blocks: The Block Manager is now more flexible and powerful.
Surface Fillets: FilletSrf has a new UI with dynamic radius previews.

Display

Features include: extremely fast 3D graphics, unlimited viewports, shaded, working views, perspective working views, named views, floating views, full-screen display, draw order support, two‑point perspective, clipping planes, and one-to-one scale to view models at full size.
New in Rhino 8:

Metal: Blazing fast 3D drawing on Mac.
New Display Mode: Monochrome, a clean, minimal look, perfect for showcasing architectural work.

Rendering and Presentation

High-quality presentations are critical to most design projects.

Features include Rhino Render, a ray trace renderer with textures, bumps, highlights, transparency, spotlights with hotspot, angle and direction control, point lights, directional lights, rectangular lights, linear lights, and shadows, and customizable resolution, realtime render preview, realtime render preview selected objects, turntable, export to many common file formats used by renderers, rendering plugin support, settings saved in file.
New in Rhino 8:

Rhino Render: We’ve updated the Cycles engine for faster, GPU-accelerated raytracing.
UV Mapping: UV Mapping has been improved with a floating UV Editor, new unwrapping algorithms, pinning and a better texture quality in the display.
Procedural Textures: Native, per-pixel procedural textures in raytraced and rendered modes.
Display Modes: Monochrome, a clean, minimal look, perfect for showcasing architectural work.

Drafting

Every type of physical product design relies on technical illustration and 2D drawing to concisely communicate ideas, specifications, and instructions to people in design, development, and fabrication. Our goal for Rhino was to make it easier to create 2D drawings and illustrations for every discipline in every notation system and visual style used worldwide.

Annotation objects include: arrows, dots, dimensions (horizontal, vertical, aligned, rotated, radial, diameter, angle), text blocks, leaders, hidden line removal, Unicode (double-byte) support for text, dimensions, and notes. Dimensions in perspective views are supported.
New in Rhino 8:

Linetypes: Draw stylized curves with pattern, width and taper to communicate design or artistic flair.
Reflected Ceiling Plans: A reflected parallel projection viewport mode, perfect for RCPs.
Dynamic 2D Drawings
Section Styles: Clipping planes and section styles give more control when using clipping planes.

Digital Fabrication

As you may know, the Rhino development project started more than 25 years ago to provide marine designers with tools for building computer models that could be used to drive the digitally controlled fabrication equipment used in shipyards.

In Rhino 8, try out:

ShrinkWrap: ShrinkWrap creates a watertight mesh around open or closed meshes, NURBS geometry, SubD, and point clouds: ideal for creating meshes for 3D printing.
Sectioning for Fabrication: Support for extracting curves, hatches, surfaces and slices of clipping planes.

Mesh Tools

Robust mesh import, export, creation, and editing tools are critical to all phases of design, including:

Transferring captured 3D data from digitizing and scanning into Rhino as mesh models.
Exchanging mesh data with many applications such as SketchUp® and Modo®.
Exporting meshes for analysis, rendering, prototyping, and fabrication.
Converting NURBS to meshes for display and rendering.
QuadRemesh: Quickly create a quad mesh from existing surfaces, solids, meshes, or SubDs—ideal for rendering, animation, CFD, FEA, and reverse engineering.
In Rhino 8, try out:

Improved Mesh Booleans: Completely rewritten and more reliable Mesh Booleans.
ShrinkWrap: ShrinkWrap creates a watertight mesh around open or closed meshes, NURBS geometry, SubD, and point clouds: ideal for creating meshes for 3D printing.

3D Capture

Capturing existing 3D data is often one of the first steps in a design project. Rhino has always directly supported both 3D digitizing hardware and 3D scanned point cloud data. Rhino now supports:

Large point clouds. 3D scanners have become faster and cheaper, making huge scan files more common.
Rhino’s 64-bit support and enhanced support for graphic co‑processors have made working with these large point clouds possible.
LiDAR captures 3D terrain data for agriculture, archaeology, conservation, geology, land use planning, surveying, transportation, plus wind farm, solar farm, and cell tower deployment optimization. Rhino for Windows has robust support for plugins, such as RhinoTerrain™, that provide specialty tools for these new Rhino users.

3D digitizing support: Microscribe®, FaroArm®, and ROMER - Windows only.

Inspection and Analysis

Design realization requires high‑quality 3D models in every phase of design, presentation, analysis, and fabrication. Rhino includes tools to help ensure that the 3D models used throughout your process are of the highest possible quality.

Analysis: point, length, distance, angle, radius, bounding box, normal direction, area, area centroid, area moments, volume, volume centroid, volume moments, hydrostatics, surface curvature, geometric continuity, deviation, nearest point, curvature graph on curves and surfaces, naked edges, working surface analysis viewport modes (draft angle, zebra stripe, environment map with surface color blend, show edges, show naked edges, Gaussian curvature, mean curvature, and minimum or maximum radius of curvature).
New in Rhino 8:

Curvature Analysis: Now supports SubDs.
Draft Angle Analysis: Allows using Named CPlanes, a smarter CPlane Z option and automatically sets direction when switching options.
Point Deviation: Now supports SubDs and shows red numbers when invalid distances are entered.

Large Projects

File management tools for managing large projects and teams include: Notes, templates, merge files, export selected objects, save small, incremental save, bitmap file preview, Rhino file preview, export with origin point, worksessions (Windows only), blocks, file compression for meshes and preview images.

Compatibility

Rhino is compatible with hundreds of CAD, CAM, CAE, rendering, and animation products. The openNURBS libraries allow hundreds of other applications to read and write Rhino’s native 3DM files.

In addition, Rhino 8 now supports:

USD Export: Universal Scene Description, an extensible format commonly used in visualization applications.
GLTF Import/Export: GL Transmission Format, useful for sharing 3D models on the web using WebGL.
Improved support for many formats.

Grasshopper

Grasshopper is a graphical algorithm editor included with Rhino.

Unlike RhinoScript, Rhino.Python, or other programming languages, Grasshopper requires no knowledge of programming or scripting but still allows developers and designers to develop form-generation algorithms without writing code.

New in Grasshopper 1 in Rhino 8:

Object Attributes: Manage Rhino object attributes directly from Grasshopper.
Annotations: Document your design with Grasshopper’s annotation, hatch, and linetype components.
Blocks: Create block definitions and instances in Grasshopper.
Live Baking: Live update existing Rhino objects from Grasshopper.
UserText: Add, modify, or remove user text from any Rhino object.

Developer Tools

The world’s most robust 3D development platform for specialty modeling, rendering, analysis, and fabrication tools across a wide variety of disciplines.

More accessible development tools: RhinoCommon (.NET), Grasshopper, Rhino.Python, RhinoScript, the Zoo license manager for plugins, and the Rhino Package Manager are key ingredients.
Comprehensive documentation.
An active developer community.
Open-source Rhino development tools, including Rhino.Python and RhinoCommon.
Free developer tools, including technical support, marketing support, and training. Our development tools are available to everyone with a valid Rhino license. No special program registration, contracts, license agreement, or approval is needed.
Localization and translation services are available. Details…
Plugins: The Rhino SDK exposes most of Rhino’s internal workings, making it possible for third-party developers to create powerful plugins and add-ons. A programmer’s I/O tool kit with source code is available on openNURBS web site.
8 Scripting: Rhino 8 features a new powerful code editor and scripting platform, supporting RhinoCommon (C#) and CPython in both Rhino and Grasshopper on Windows and Mac.

Floating Licenses? Cloud Zoo is the answer

Cloud Zoo is a new option: It does not replace the existing license key system or Zoo, you can continue to use them. Cloud Zoo is a cloud-based license management system that:

Allows you to use Rhino by logging into the Cloud Zoo using your Rhino Account.
Allows you to track and manage your licenses and users.
Keeps track of the licenses you own.
Manages your licenses across multiple computers and users. (Run anywhere your license allows)
Allows you to use Rhino on multiple machines as long as you abide by the license agreement.

Specs

System Requirements

Rhino runs on Windows and Mac desktop and laptop computers with:

Rhino 8 for Windows

Rhino for Mac

Hardware

64-bit Intel or AMD processor (Not ARM)
At least 8 GB (RAM) memory is recommended
600 MB disk space
OpenGL 4.1 capable video card is recommended
At least 4 GB Video card memory is recommended
A multi-button mouse with a scroll wheel is recommended
SpaceNavigator optional
Apple Intel hardware with Boot Camp optional
(Boot Camp is not supported on Apple Silicon Macs.)

Windows Operating Systems

Windows 11
Windows 10

Internet connection for

Download.
License validation.
Rhino account for:

Technical support on the forum.
Cloud Zoo license management.

User recommendations
Since we can’t test every possible hardware combination,
you can get hardware recommendations from other users…

Not supported

Windows 8.1 and older
Windows Server (any version)
Boot Camp on Apple Silicon. M1 Macs.
Virtualization systems such as VMWare, Remote Desktop, and Parallels
Linux
ARM processors including the Microsoft SQ® 1 and 2

Hardware

Mac with Intel or Apple processor
At least 8 GB memory (RAM) is recommended
10 GB disk space
A multi-button mouse with a scroll wheel is recommended
SpaceNavigator and SpaceMouse Wireless optional

macOS Operating Systems

macOS 14 (Sonoma)
macOS 13 (Ventura)
macOS 12.4 (Monterey)

Internet connection for

Download.
License validation.
Rhino account for:

Technical support on the forum.
Cloud Zoo license management.

Not supported

macOS 11 (Big Sur) or older
Digitizers (Faro, MicroScribe)

Support & Maintenance

Technical support for Rhino for Windows and Mac is available directly from McNeel by e-mail at tech@mcneel.com or by phone from 8am to noon, and between 1pm to 5pm Pacific Time at the number (206) 545-6877. For more technical support information and options please visit the Robert McNeel tech support page.

Edu Proof

Proof of Academic Status

Students

If you are a student with an acceptable form of academic ID at a primary school, secondary school, college, university, or career state-accredited school, you qualify to order a single-user educational license.

Provide your academic ID AND one of the following with your order:

Your current class schedule DATED for the current school term
Your transcript DATED for the current school term
Your tuition bill DATED for the current school term

There is a limit of one license per product, per individual at the Educational price.

The Educational license is for that individual's own use -not to be shared with others, or installed throughout their company.

Faculty/Staff

If you are a member of the faculty or staff with an acceptable form of academic ID at a primary school, secondary school, college, university, or career state-accredited school, you qualify to order a single-user educational license.

Provide one of the following with your order:

Your current course schedule DATED for the current school term
Faculty/staff pay stub from the current school term

Schools

Any government accredited school can order single-user educational licenses or lab licenses on a school purchase order or procurement card.

These licenses can only be run on computers owned by the school.

Sending the Proof

Information regarding where to send your Proof of Educational Status will be automatically e-mailed to you upon receipt of your order. You can also check our Educational Orders FAQ.

Technical Support

Novedge does not provide technical support for educational versions of the software. If you need technical support please refer to the manufacturer website for additional information.

Webinars

Latest Rhino for Windows and Mac Webinar from Novedge

Trial Download

McNeel Trial Software Download

Experience the power and versatility of Rhino 3D with a free 90-day trial. This full-featured evaluation allows you to explore Rhino's comprehensive 3D modeling tools, including the new ShrinkWrap and SubD Creases features, and a significant speed boost for Mac users. Whether you're a designer, architect, or engineer, Rhino 8 offers the flexibility and precision you need to bring your ideas to life. Start your trial today and discover how Rhino 3D can enhance your design workflow.

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Tutorials

Rhino Tutorials

You can find a collection of our favorite Rhino 3D Tutorials here:

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