Novedge Pulse™ of Sandy McNeel

El Habitat by SHINE Architecture in Leon, MexicoWe were pleasantly surprised to see an announcement for Rhino 5 in Architectural Record!See it for yourself [more...]

WantedDesign, an international design event of lectures, exhibitions, and workshops, is now showing in New York City at the Tunnel at the Terminal Stores building.David Trubridge returns to the event, having just returned from the Milan Design Fair, where he exhibited 'The Elements', an installation of hanging sculptural forms with Swarovski crystals, acrylic, and anodized aluminum.At WantedDesign David is launching his new light, Manuka.WantedDesign program information [more...]

British women's clothing retailer Karen Millen has teamed with the architecture firm Mamou-Mani to create a series of window displays in The Regent Street Windows Project 2013. Mamou-Mani is one of our Rhino and Grasshopper clients.The Regent Street Windows Project connects fashion, architecture, and culture to create a series of unique window displays in London. Six teams of architects and retailers are on display till May 15th.Project details [more...]

When all is said and done Rhino is still only a tool. You can create poor designs as easily as you can create great designs.For inspiration, the book Thomas Heatherwick Making is a showcase of great designs. The 600-page book is a compilation of Heatherwick studio projects from 1989 to 2011 -- projects as varied as furniture, bridges, handbags, boats, buses, shopping centers, and Christmas cards.Each project starts with a design question. The answers are fascinating and creative solutions.Thomas Heatherwick has said that design is a solution to a problem. We are glad to help with those solutions.To purchase from Amazon in US [more...]

Using the concept of a whale's backbone Canadian architect Andrew McConnell has created the Vertebrae Staircase, modeled entirely in Rhino and T-Splines.Featured in Dezeen [more...]

Wired Design interviewed Otto Stockmeier the day after he and Derek Van Gorder released their science fiction short film, C (299,792 km/s). Stockmeier discusses how their movie was made with limited resources, raising money on Kickstarter and using basic film making tools available to most everyone. Rhino was used for the modeling. When modeler Charles Adams came on board to build the spaceship, he started with the 3D Sketchup model used for the Kickstarter campaign. He rebuild it in Rhino, refined it and added more details. More important to the filmmakers was that with the Rhino model Charles was able to break the model down into pieces for a base kit of laser cut parts, generating accurate shapes for laser printing. Wired Design interview [more...]

Showroom 383 Hair Salon in Mill Valley Rachael Yu and Aaron Taylor Harvey are forging their own path in architecture, interiors, and graphic design. In 2011 they founded Myriad Harbor in San Francisco, a partnership between the two recent graduates of the California College of the Arts.Myriad Harbor works exclusively in Rhino, including construction drawings, layouts, and renderings.Now, the magazine California Home and Design (CH+D) has awarded the two designers their prize for 2013 Emerging Designer.CH+D grants awards in 10 categories to California-based design professionals.CH+D article [more...]

A Kinetic 100 v2 model airplane is now hanging in the Deutsches Museum Technik in Munich on permanent display including credits and a narrative on dynamic soaring. Deutsches is the largest technological museum of its kind and hosts a huge collection of historic originals.The airplane, with its 130' wing span, has clocked 498 mph, the current recorded soaring speed.Rhino and MasterCam were used in the design of the airplane.Technical details on the design process [more...]

Kiwi Feather Props Ltd have been using Rhino for production of their propellers for the last three years.The earlier prop designs, such as the K3 model, took many years to create and produce. With the help of Rhino and modern production methods, the later designs, such as the K4 and K2, were built in under one year.Rowan Blundell notes, "All of the propellers are multiple, intersecting helix surfaces, so really was a challenge initially to obtain nice joins!"The props are first 3D-printed in ABS. Later they are cast in stainless.More details on Kiwi Feather Props [more...]

Last December Seattle's Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) moved to a new location in a former Naval Reserve Armory built out over a lake. Part of the new historical displays is the Wawona sculpture by artist John Grade.Using salvaged planks from Wawona, a dismantled 1897 schooner, the sculpture's form appropriately evokes the shape of a ship's hull. It is constructed of the douglas fir salvaged from the Wawona, who sat nearby in its last years in a failed attempt to raise funds for restoration.Structural engineering for the sculpture was provided by Arup. The structural engineer, Hans-Erik Blomgren, used Rhino for the concept design. That's what happens when someone takes a Rhino class.Arup's engineers partnered with John Grade from the beginning to make sure the assembled parts, suspended vertically from the building's roof, for the 56-foot tall kinetic sculpture to retain its structural integrity under both earthquake and human-induced loads. The design uses 130 cubic feet of computer-cut and hand carved, old-growth douglas fir and water-jet steel ribs.Arup article on structural design . . .Photos in the Seattle Times [more...]

'Don't look at me that way' wall artArtist Nicole Aptekar uses Rhino and Grasshopper to create elaborate three dimensional art out of laser-cut paper and card stock.The blog Coilhouse interviewed Nicole in November, before a gallery show. Nicole explained that she starts by designing the pieces in Rhino before cutting them with a laser and laying out the pieces, shaping and twisting the composition as she goes.'Don't look at me that way' in Rhin [more...]

KeyShot is featuring Williamson Simon, CAD instructor at the Wentworth Institute of Technology Department of Industrial Design in Boston, on their web site. Simon uses Rhino for modeling, then KeyShot for rendering.More information on Simon's methods [more...]

Architect Wil Natzel explored architectural ornamentation for his part of the Northern Spark festival in Minneapolis last June. With the help of Rhino, he created and installed Night Blooms, a temporary cardboard forest. From his designs, he created trees by using Rhino to unfold the 3-D objects into flat patterns.More information on the process in Wired Magazine [more...]

David Rutten, the developer of Grasshopper, has won an Innovative Research Award from Acadia.The award recognizes innovative research in the field of digital design in architecture. Acadia elaborated on David's impact, "Grasshopper has been pivotal to the transformation of parametric design practices over the past five-plus years.""He has made parametric design and system optimization easily accessible, and usable, to thousands of academics and practitioners. Mr. Rutten is known among his peers for being remarkably generous with his time. He provides continuous assistance to Grasshopper users through his tireless involvement on the Grasshopper blog and has remained actively supportive of the Acadia community for many years."David couldn't be at the Acadia conference last week to accept his award, but recorded this self-revealing video for the conference.David's acceptance video [more...]

The 4 Apps Every Architect Should Download Now -- that's what Archdaily reports after their Facebook poll. Our Mac app makes the top 4 list [more...]

Barcelona Smartcity is upgrading Barcelona's electricity supply system. As part of this project they've installed the Endesa Pavilion, a solar-powered exhibition center, as a control center for Barcelona Smartcity and to provide a model for other cities.The architectural research and education center, the Instituto de Arquitectura Avanzada de Cataluna (IAAC), designed the project. To accommodate the needs of sun orientation and other environmental aspects, the solar modules' sizes and shape vary.IAAC used mathematical equations to set the parameters for the solar inclination, orientation, and outside openings. If you look closely at the video on the Freshome web site, you will see Grasshopper being used. The wooden pavilion was fabricated by CNC machines, so construction was precise and quick, even though the various modules were completely different from each other. The building was built in less than one month.The pavilion is in place till November 15, 2012, and located at the end of the Muelle de la Marina at the Olimpic Port of Barcelona. More information on the site by FastCoDesign [more...]

What do you do when your iPhone charge cable turns into jumbled spaghetti in your pocket? You design a solution to fix it.That's how Michiel Cornelissen came up with the iPhone accessory, The Wrap.Originally Michiel was simply trying to get rid of the inconvenience of trying to keep the USB cable wrapped around the charger. 'I realized that one end of the charger is already perfectly fit for the job, and all you really need is the same shape on the other side as well. The Wrap provides just that, clipping onto the USB plug.'Michiel says, 'And of course, all my products are designed in Rhino!' The Wrap is now available through his web site and Shapeways [more...]