5 Setup

Next week we will start with a very basic introduction to grasshopper. Grasshopper is a plug-in that works alongside Rhino 5 and is available for free.

Windows users can download the plug-in here and follow the installation instructions.
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/page/download-1

Mac users need to work with the Rhino 6 WIP, which is a pre-release version of Rhino that is available to owners of Rhino 5 for mac. Grasshopper will run natively in Rhino 6, so for now Mac users must download and install this pre-release version of Rhino, which is still in development and thus is missing some features and may have stability issues. See more here:
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/notes/index/show?noteKey=Will_Grasshopper_work_on_the_Mac%3F

Some of the the videos I will post are sped up to compensate for how slowly I typically speak, but not all of them are. If you find a video is too fast or slow, you can get a browser extension that will let you speed up or slow down the videos as you like.

Chrome:
Playback speed for embedded vimeo
Playback Rate

FireFox:
Faster Video

I’m sure there are similar options for Safari and other browsers, but I can’t seem to find a free one.

In both the Windows and Mac versions of Rhino you can customize the pop-up menu that appears when you click on the middle mouse button. You’ll see me do this often when I’m working in Rhino – it’s a huge productivity booster.

To customize in Windows:
Click the middle mouse button
click on the small gray bar at the top of the menu – this will “dock” the menu
remove items from the menu by holding shift as you drag them off the menu and into the workspace
add items by holding CTRL as you drag from an existing toolbar into the menu

To customize on the Mac:
http://discourse.mcneel.com/t/cant-customize-middle-mouse-button-popup-toolbar/4044

If you have the Apple Magic Mouse and are using it with Rhino, you might find there are some things about it that are not ideal. There are a couple of tricks that might improve the behavior the mouse that you can try setting up.

If the virtual “scroll” is too fast, go to Rhino > Preferences > View > Zoom, and change to Scale factor value to a value closer to 1 to slow down the zooming speed.

You can also try the third party mouse control application called Magic Prefs that allows you to make more detailed adjustments to the mouse settings than the System Preferences panel allows.

Rhino is available from the RISD store. It’s in one of the locked cases in the back, so you will need to ask for it. But be sure to get the right OS. With a student ID, it should be $80. Regular student licenses are more expensive ($195), so don’t get it anywhere else but from the RISD store.

Here’s a link to where you can purchase the educational license of Keyshot:
https://buy.keyshot.com/products/keyshot-hd-animation-education-version

You will need to supply proof of educational status, and they approve the purchase during business hours (M-F, 9am -6pm PST) so you’ll need to keep that in mind.

You can get a plugin for Rhino that lets you work between Keyshot and Rhino a little bit more easily. Get it here:
https://www.keyshot.com/downloads/plugins/

In the meantime, you can use the trial version:
https://www.keyshot.com/try/

Many of the videos we post are recorded on a Windows computer. Some of you might prefer your setup to look more like the Windows version of Rhino. Here’s how Rhino approaches this:
“By default, Rhino for Mac presumes you are not coming from Rhino for Windows. If you would like to see Windows-esque toolbars, navigate to Rhinoceros > Preferences > Themes and select Rhino for Windows. You will need to start a new modeling window for these changes to take effect.”

See more about the interface differences between Mac and Windows here:

http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/mac/diff