Alternatives to Rhino in 2024

What is Rhinoceros?

Rhinoceros (commonly known as Rhino) is a very popular comprehensive 3D modeling solution. Rhino is widely used in a multitude of different use cases and industries, including product design, architecture, multimedia, and industrial design. Its versatile and convenient toolset can be helpful to both professionals and casual users.

Precision is one of Rhino’s most important factors, with the ability to manipulate various curves and surfaces with no restrictions whatsoever. The entire application is built using the concept of non-uniform rational b-splines, or NURBS, a mathematical model that is renowned for its accuracy with complex shapes. This approach makes Rhino a great tool for both traditional geometric shapes and complex objects.

Other capabilities of Rhino include an impressive built-in rendering engine, a significant focus on extendibility (including support for Grasshopper, a visual programming language), support for multiple CAD model formats, and an active community of both casual users and professionals.

The first version of Rhino (1.0) was released back in 1998 following a lengthy beta testing process and at least one rebranding event (its original name, Sculptura, was abandoned due to a trademark conflict with AccuModel). The solution was developed by Robert McNeel & Associates (TLM, Inc.), and multiple new versions with an expanded feature set have been released.

For example, the latest version of Rhino (Rhino 8) brought several new modeling tools, such as ShrinkWrap, in addition to PushPull workflows, faster render time, more customization options for the UI, and an impressive performance boost for Mac users.

Capabilities of Rhinoceros

Rhino is incredibly powerful and versatile as a 3D modeling solution, offering a high level of precision, an expansive community, plenty of possibilities for integration with other software, and a plugin ecosystem that can expand its capabilities even further.

Pricing model of Rhinoceros

Unlike most of its competitors, Rhino has a very simple licensing model for commercial users. It consists of a single pricing tier that costs $995 per license (Mac or Windows version). The license also includes lifetime support, with no additional payments required for features such as customer support or new software updates.

Older versions of Rhino can also be upgraded to the latest version for $595 per license. If necessary, both pricing points can be purchased for 10 or 50 users at once.

Necessity of an alternative for Rhino

Rhino is an exceptional 3D modeling tool, but it does not suit every industry use case. Additionally, the software has plenty of issues and inconveniences, such as the low quality of the native render engine or the outdated user interface, which is difficult to navigate.

Luckily, there are plenty of solutions that can be considered alternatives to Rhino in some way. However, most of them are still variations of 3D modeling solutions with additional features and capabilities.

In this article, our main goal is to present as many different alternatives to Rhino as possible while trying to cover all kinds of variations of 3D modeling software, including sketching software, CAD solutions, BIM solutions, etc.

Methodology for presenting and evaluating alternatives to Rhinoceros

Since Rhino itself can be used in several different industries with their own goals and use cases, evaluating every single competitor to it is very challenging. The inability of a reviewer to have in-depth personal experience with every single solution on the list makes the issue even more difficult.

As such, we have tried to provide as much information about every solution as possible, including both objective and subjective information. This methodology includes four main categories of information: customer ratings, key features, pricing, and the author’s personal opinion.

Customer ratings

Customer ratings of specific software are an extremely important part of formulating an objective opinion on the topic. A combination of multiple customer reviews can be used to form a general understanding of the software’s overall state, including its advantages and shortcomings.

This article uses review aggregation websites such as TrustRadius, Capterra, and G2 as the main sources of customer reviews. All three of these resources have reputations for checking every single customer review for validity while also not letting the software owners affect these reviews in any way. Each of the three sources has hundreds of thousands of customer reviews accumulated over the years, as well as thousands of software providers represented in their databases.

Customer ratings can be an invaluable source of information about a specific software application or platform. This includes both the benefits and shortcomings of each application, which is something we discuss further below.

Key features, benefits, and disadvantages

Review aggregation websites are a great source of highly subjective information about particular software. This information is invaluable when determining the advantages and shortcomings of each software application, among other important factors.

Customer feedback in the form of detailed user reviews is very useful not only to the creator of the software itself but also to our information aggregation efforts. In this article, most of our information about the advantages and shortcomings of each application is taken from one of the aforementioned review aggregation platforms.

Unfortunately, not all of the software on this list is well-known enough to have dozens of reviews available. In these cases, we replace the “advantages” and “shortcomings” sections with a “key features” section to provide at least some sort of explanation of the solution’s capabilities and unique features.

Pricing

While it is true that the overall set of features plays a significant role in whether a particular company purchases particular software, the price of the software is just as important for most customers. It is not uncommon for companies and individuals to have very limited budgets for specific tasks, even if these tasks are instrumental to success, such as 3D modeling or rendering.

This section offers as much information about each solution’s pricing model as can be gathered from public sources. Unfortunately, many software applications in the 3D modeling market keep most of their pricing data on a need-to-know basis, offering personalized quotations to companies that request them.

Personal opinion of the author

This element of product information is the most subjective of them all, since its contents may change drastically from one example to another. The main goal of this element of the methodology is to provide information that has not yet been introduced, such as some sort of interesting fact, the author’s personal view of the software’s capabilities, or even something as simple as a restructured and short explanation of the software’s overall capabilities and use cases.

Paid alternatives to Rhino

It should not be very surprising to learn that the majority of Rhino alternatives are paid solutions in some way. However, the line between paid and free software does get a bit blurry with modern licensing options, and this is something that we will explore later. For now, here is a list of examples of paid Rhino alternatives.

AutoCAD

AutoCAD is one of the most popular CAD solutions on the market. It was created and distributed by Autodesk, the best-known software distributor in the industry. The biggest field of specialization for AutoCAD is, obviously, its modeling capability, and it is widely used by engineers, architects, construction specialists, and many other professionals. The solution supports multiple versions of its own CAD model format, and its capabilities can also be expanded using a variety of add-ons and plugins (made possible thanks to support for API-based scripting via AutoLISP, VBA, .NET, ObjectARX, and other programming languages).

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AutoCAD is a popular CAD solution that has become something of a household name in the 3D modeling industry. It excels at performing modeling tasks of practically any difficulty, offering an impressive set of features to designers, architects, engineers, and so on. It also supports multiple scripting languages and APIs, opening up the potential for customization and the expansion of the features outside of the basic set. At the same time, AutoCAD is not an easy solution to deal with. Its overall range of features can be extremely overwhelming, the learning curve is very steep, and it can be somewhat difficult to share AutoCAD data with other software within the same project.

Archicad

Archicad is widely known as the first commercial BIM software on the market. It is far from the most popular (that title belongs to Revit), but it still has plenty of capabilities in its own right. Archicad has an impressive CAD-like set of features with 3D modeling capabilities while also being relatively competent in the BIM department. Its BIM capabilities include the automation of documentation workflow, information measurements, issue tracking, and so on. It is true that Archicad is BIM software first and foremost, but its CAD capabilities are also quite substantial.

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Archicad is a competent BIM solution that also offers a surprisingly versatile set of 3D modeling features. While it is true that Archicad is known as the first BIM solution on the market, it owes a lot of its reputation to its own merit. It offers multiple BIM capabilities such as automation, collaboration, and issue tracking, and there is also an entirely separate CAD feature set that rivals a lot of dedicated 3D modeling solutions in its capabilities. Archicad is also far from perfect, with lackluster 2D drawing capabilities and a lack of customization for object libraries, but its overall set of features is still more than competent for its market.

Solid Edge

Solid Edge is one of many 3D modeling solutions on the market with a respectable set of features and not many unique capabilities that help it stand out on its own. It was developed by Siemens Digital Industries Software as a highly modular solution for product data management, mechanical design, electrical design, and other similar purposes.

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Solid Edge is a 3D CAD toolset distributed by Siemens Digital Industries Software. Its highly modular architecture might be its biggest unusual capability, since the solution itself is relatively standard in its features. It is great 3D modeling software that works best in product manufacturing use cases, including design, assembly, and so on. It is not particularly complicated, but the overall logic behind the software might take a while to understand. Solid Edge also has a rather confusing pricing model, and it has rather high hardware requirements for resource-intensive projects.

SolidWorks

SolidWorks is a relatively complex CAD solution that is well-known in the industry. It is another good example of CAD software that attempts to fix some of the issues that have plagued the industry for decades. SolidWorks is a powerful but convenient modeling solution revolving around CAD and CAE capabilities. It is not the easiest solution to get used to, but it is also significantly less difficult than a lot of its competitors. It is also often considered relatively inexpensive, although there is no public pricing information to prove or disprove this statement.

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SolidWorks might seem like just another 3D CAD solution, but it does have a few elements that distinguish it from the rest. One such element is the ongoing effort of SolidWorks to offer a variety of CAD tools without making them too difficult to learn. It is also an excellent solution for tasks such as simulation and environment management, among several others. In all fairness, there are also plenty of capabilities that are extremely difficult to work with, and the overall license management experience is less than satisfactory, to say the least.

Alibre Design

Alibre Design is one of the few solutions on this list that prioritizes smaller businesses and individual professionals over large enterprise-level clients. It is a robust CAD solution developed by Alibre, LLC, and it offers a balance between complexity and cost-effectiveness in a single 3D modeling software application. Alibre Design is relatively cheap while also providing 2D drafting, 3D modeling, assembly, sheet metal design, and other similar features. It also supports direct editing and provides impressive versatility by being able to work with multiple CAD model formats.

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Alibre Design is a solid choice for users that are in need of a small-scale CAD solution for a small or medium business. It is fast, versatile, and offers a decent package of capabilities, including parametric modeling, direct editing, assembly design, documentation generation, sheet metal design, and other capabilities. It is also surprisingly cheap and allows its users the choice between a subscription-based model and a perpetual license. Unfortunately, it is not particularly useful on large-scale projects, and its relative lack of popularity means that finding information on the Internet about certain topics or capabilities might prove very challenging.

CATIA

CATIA is an interesting combination not only of CAD, but also CAM and CAE capabilities in the same platform. CATIA was developed by Dassault Systèmes, a well-known software provider in the architectural industry. The name CATIA means “Computer-Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application,” and it is a sophisticated CAD solution with the ability to support project development throughout the entire lifecycle. Another feature of CATIA that is worth noting is its extremely competent surface modeling, which is a highly sought-after feature in the aerospace, automotive, and several other industries.

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CATIA is a combination of CAE, CAM, and CAD capabilities that can be very difficult to get into. There are plenty of industries and use cases in which CATIA might be beneficial, including aerospace, automotive, and multiple other high-tech fields of work. CATIA’s capabilities in terms of integration with other solutions are outstanding, and the overall model detailing feature set can yield extremely satisfying results in the right hands. However, CATIA is not a user-friendly solution at all, it is very difficult to learn all of its logic and features, and its hardware requirements are just as high as those of any other CAD software.

MicroStation

MicroStation presents a vast and varied set of features for the AEC industry developed and distributed by Bentley. It takes a universal approach to the architectural software market by offering practically everything in a single package. Visualization, infrastructure design, analysis, and modeling are just a few examples of the industries and specializations that MicroStation can be used for. Other capabilities of the solution include a basic BIM feature set, a relatively high level of customization via multiple APIs, and accurate geospatial capabilities.

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MicroStation from Bentley might not be particularly well-known in the AEC industry, but its overall range of features is competent enough to make it worth considering for many users. It is a highly versatile solution that offers CAD features, BIM capabilities, and plenty of in-between tools. It supports multiple file formats, does not demand much from the customer’s hardware, and has a very straightforward licensing model with a low total cost. Unfortunately, it is also not particularly suitable for large-scale projects, and its rendering capabilities are somewhat subpar.

PTC Creo

PTC Creo is a complex CAD platform distributed by PTC Inc. which offers a massive number of different features in the CAD sphere. Creo can be used to create mechanical parts, assist assembly processes, and in many other use cases that make it very favorable for the automotive and aerospace industries, among others. Creo cannot be considered a single application, because it is a modular collection of over a dozen applications that seamlessly work together. Each application is focused on its own specific set of use cases: for example, Creo Parametric is the baseline of the solution, with direct and parametric modeling capabilities and offering the majority of basic 3D CAD tools and features.

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PTC Creo is an impressive collection of many different capabilities in the 3D modeling field. Its other capabilities include CAM and CAE elements, and all of these parts can be acquired and used separately when necessary. The modular nature of Creo is one of its strongest parts, and it is also one of its biggest problems. In its most basic form, Creo is rather difficult to understand, and the modular architecture makes it even more difficult to navigate through multiple menus and dozens of capabilities. It is also very hardware-intensive and very expensive, although these factors are not an issue for many enterprise clients who also appreciate the overall flexibility of the software.

Free alternatives to Rhino

As we have mentioned before, the majority of the 3D CAD market consists of paid solutions with different pricing models. There are also plenty of solutions that offer limited versions of their software for free, even if the limitations are significant enough for these versions to be ineffective for anyone but the smallest businesses. To address these examples, this section of the article includes both completely free software and “free” software that also offers better paid versions.

SketchUp

SketchUp is an extremely popular sketching and modeling solution that has plenty of audience among both casual and professional users. It can be useful in multiple industries, such as landscaping, interior design, architecture, and many others. The ability to add custom-made extensions greatly expands the original functionality of the solution, and an active community makes sure that new and improved extensions are developed on a regular basis. The existence of a free version and the overall user-friendliness of SketchUp’s interface makes it a very compelling alternative to solutions like Rhino.

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SketchUp is an extremely well-known 3D modeling and sketching solution. The use of push-and-pull logic in its designs makes it very user-friendly and easily modifiable, as well. Other capabilities of the solution include detailed rendering, basic collaboration capabilities, and an impressive range of extensions and add-ons to expand the original feature set. At the same time, SketchUp offers little to nothing as basic tutorials, most of the expansions have to be paid for separately, and many of them do not work well with one another.

Vectary

Vectary is a relatively small-scale CAD solution with a significant focus on the combination of 3D modeling and high-quality rendering. It attempts to make the overall user experience as convenient as possible, and its main target audience are marketers, content creators, and designers rather than engineers and architects. Vectary has a significant template library, plenty of collaboration capabilities, and even support for several variations of AR projects.

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Vectary is a relatively basic 3D modeling solution that does not fit most of the enterprise-grade use cases that other software from this list usually works with. Vectary represents a lighter version of these solutions which is mostly made for designers and content creators, who value user-friendliness and convenience over the depth and expansiveness of the feature set. Of course, Vectary also has its own business plan that attempts to offer something close to an actual CAD solution in its capabilities, but it is still not able to keep up with most of the competition, which is why it targets individuals and small and medium businesses from the start. It is a cloud-only solution with its fair share of advantages and shortcomings, but its low price might be of interest to a very specific range of users when it comes to Rhino alternatives.

Blender

Blender is an extremely popular solution that manages to cover the entirety of the 3D model pipeline in a single platform. Not only can it be used to perform detailed 3D modeling, but it can also animate, render, simulate, rig, develop, track motion, and much more. Blender is widely used in the architecture, animation, and game development industries, with features such as sculpting, rendering, path tracing, and many others. The fact that it is free is just another advantage to its already long list of benefits.

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Blender may very well be the most popular free 3D modeling software on the market. There is practically no competition for its overall range of features, and even some of its case-specific features, such as 3D modeling or animation, are not as extensive in most alternative solutions. At the same time, Blender itself suffers from a range of the issues that free software commonly struggles with, such as the complete lack of an onboarding process, an extremely steep learning curve, and the absence of a dedicated source of training materials (since all of the material is generated by the community in a disjointed fashion).

Onshape

Onshape is a cloud-based 3D modeling solution that aims to solve multiple long-running issues in the CAD software industry. It can be used for both drawing and 3D modeling and supports parametric and direct editing. The solution also simplifies data exchange by offering convenient centralization and collaboration capabilities in the same package. Onshape also offers a certain level of data management capabilities, access to the software’s API for further customization, thorough access control capabilities, and more.

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Onshape is a CAD solution that was created by former SolidWorks executives, which also explains its overarching goal of solving some of the biggest issues in the CAD software industry. Onshape is completely cloud-based, it does not require any kind of dedicated powerful hardware to run properly, and it also manages to combine respectable CAD capabilities with a multitude of collaboration and data-sharing tools. At the same time, the lack of offline access leaves the possibility that the end user may be locked out of their models at any time, and the solution itself is not particularly user-friendly when it comes to creating anything but the most basic shapes and models.

Shapr3D

Shapr3D is a competent 3D modeling solution with a somewhat basic set of features. It supports Mac and Windows devices, as well as iPads and the specialized Apple Pencil hardware. There are also multiple rendering approaches to choose from, integration capabilities with several CAD solutions, a high level of precision for models and renders, and several different features that are exclusive to the iPad+Pencil combo. Shapr3D also invests quite a lot into creating a variety of learning material on its official YouTube channel.

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Shapr3D is a relatively basic 3D modeling solution, but that does not mean it is useless. On the contrary, it is a versatile solution that supports Windows, Mac, and iPad devices (including support for touchscreen elements and Apple Pencil for the latter). It uses the geometric modeling engine that SolidWorks uses for most of its CAD features. The software is relatively user-friendly and offers plenty of learning materials on its official resources. At the same time, it might not be the best fit when it comes to extremely detailed and complex projects.

FreeCAD

FreeCAD might just be one of the best-known free modeling solutions on the market. It is extremely convenient parametric modeling software with a modular architecture, allowing for many different features to be added to the base feature package. The existence of an active community of developers around FreeCAD makes it a lot easier to find the feature or expansion that is necessary for a specific use case. It is not the most user-friendly solution out there, but its complete lack of a price tag more than makes up for this.

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FreeCAD is extremely versatile 3D modeling software that easily keeps up with many of its paid competitors. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to recommend FreeCAD to everyone, and there are several reasons for this. The biggest reason is the steep learning curve that users have to go through when adopting FreeCAD. The fact that the software’s interface is also relatively confusing makes this task even more difficult. Other than that, FreeCAD is a very useful solution with a massive active community that might be able to find a solution to just about every challenge—if the user is willing to put a lot of effort into understanding the software.

Conclusion

Rhino is a competent 3D CAD solution that specializes in working with unusual shapes and objects. It is based on the NURBS geometry, and a lot of its basic capabilities are easy to work with. It is an invaluable tool for industries that work with complex, non-standard shapes on a regular basis, such as the automotive and aerospace industries.

At the same time, it can be a very challenging solution to work with. Its overall interface is very outdated by now, it does not handle complex and detailed models very well, and its built-in rendering engine is far from perfect. As such, there will always be demand for Rhino alternatives in some form.

This article has examined multiple examples of software that might be considered Rhino 3D alternatives in specific circumstances. It is rather difficult to find software that matches every single one of Rhino’s capabilities from the get-go, which is why we have used different industries and feature categories as the baseline for our comparison.

Of course, the 3D CAD software market is far bigger than this list of examples, and the overall market for architectural solutions is even more vast and varied. For example, if Rhino had any BIM capabilities to its name, then Revizto would be a good comparison, with its excellent model management capabilities, extensive issue tracking, and detailed clash detection capabilities. It also offers VR walkthroughs and vast collaboration capabilities, something that not a lot of BIM software offers to begin with.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which solution comes closest to Rhino when it comes to direct comparison?

As we have mentioned before, the question is not as simple as it might seem at first. If we had to choose just one solution from the list, it would be either AutoCAD or Blender. The former is an extreme powerhouse of CAD capabilities that stands on top of the entire industry, while the latter is an even bigger solution suitable for use in construction, design, marketing, video game development, and many other use cases.

Would it be fair to say that paid solutions are the only ones that are worth looking at when it comes to alternatives to Rhino 3D?

While a large segment of the market is dominated by paid solutions, it would not be fair to say that there is no hope for the free solutions. Far from it: two of the best-known solutions in the industry are completely free (FreeCAD and Blender). However, they do require a significant time investment to work with, and time is even more valuable than money for most people.

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