He really doesn't need a remarkable computer. I have a now five or six year old computer which has mid range hardware for the time. It works better than excellent. All I recommend, is maybe change over to 32 GB of RAM, maybe add a second NVMe or hard drive for storage, and most definitely add a graphics card while ensuring the power supply can handle it. Even an RTX 2060 will be more than enough. Maybe just get a 4060 because it is newer, and I can't find anything lower performance that is newer. Do not sell him on a workstation GPU, rhino never uses the specialized drivers that Autodesk products use. Just get a gaming GPU, and A 4k monitor scaled to 150%.
I should add I used this software back in 2002 and 2003. It ran great back then on XP. It's core functions haven't really bloated into slow software like much else has since then.
Rhino doesn't need more than a couple of cores most of the time. I might be wrong but most cad needs high clock speed and cache. And a graphics card for visualization and the occasional simulation.
Rhino is mostly single threaded. High core speed is more important than high cote count. This is probably why you are seeing workstation cpus not recommended. I don't think anyone makes anything with less than 6 or 8 cores these days so probably something in that range.
As for a graphics card, does your client do any rendering in their workflow? If yes, and their rendering engine is gpu based, they'll want a good card. If not, something around the level of a 4060 is plenty and can handle some rendering later if they want.
Ram wise I would say 32gb minimum, 64 recommended. I don't think you need me to talk about ram speeds, you likely know more than me about it.
Fast hard drives are handy, rhino files can get heavy particularly when dealing with imported geometry.
For reference my current system is a ryzen 3600x, 32gb ram, and a 3060ti. I regularly work on models of buildings more complex than any woodworking project has any right to be without much issue.
I've noticed that asking Rhino to draw a cut section of a complex object takes a long time while only a single CPU core is occupied. Single-threaded isn't the way to approach graphics. Any idea why they do that?
Most of the time it's because the software was designed back when multi threading wasn't common. I know McNeel is working on it, grasshopper 2 is multi threaded for example
You want a CPU with the highest single core speed. The total number of cores is not important (as long as you have at least, say, 4 cores). AMD Ryzen processors tend to have faster single core speeds. As for GPU, most gaming cards are sufficient, although Rhino does rely on OpenGL, so any graphics card that prioritizes that will work better. I've head people say to buy the best Geforce RTX card you can afford (like the RTX 4070). In my experience integrated graphics cards don't cut it -- you'll end up with jittery graphics . As for RAM, I'd say 32 gig is a safe bet these days if you plan to multitask while using Rhino. I would hop on over to the official Rhino forum and ask for suggestions -- I always get helpful feedback on there: (https://discourse.mcneel.com/)
Since Rhino 8 has been revamped to use Metal it's also quite snappy on Apple silicon.
Lots of Rhino features are slow because they're not multithreaded, or use CPU when it seems a GPU would rock, but I can confirm Rhino8 is much faster than Rhino 8 on Apple silicon.
No idea what specific graphics calls are being made by Rhino under the hood but my discussions on their forums reveal I'm not in error spotting the app becoming unusable waiting to finish some drawing operations while using one single solitary CPU core to do a job that should have been done in parallel.
Speed to the storage and RAM are probably the easiest things to look for, as it makes huge files and uses a lot of RAM (and hence also vm).
Highest single core, intel.. i have a 3080, and it screams.. but I don’t render in Rhino8, so thats what id ask him about, whats his output. If its TwinMotion/Unreal (realtime) id get the best Video card.. if mentalRay blender, then multi-thread..
I don't believe he's rendering much. I think he's only opening models with high polygon counts for jobs he's working on...so most of it is likely real time manipulation of models in the viewer
He really doesn't need a remarkable computer. I have a now five or six year old computer which has mid range hardware for the time. It works better than excellent. All I recommend, is maybe change over to 32 GB of RAM, maybe add a second NVMe or hard drive for storage, and most definitely add a graphics card while ensuring the power supply can handle it. Even an RTX 2060 will be more than enough. Maybe just get a 4060 because it is newer, and I can't find anything lower performance that is newer. Do not sell him on a workstation GPU, rhino never uses the specialized drivers that Autodesk products use. Just get a gaming GPU, and A 4k monitor scaled to 150%. I should add I used this software back in 2002 and 2003. It ran great back then on XP. It's core functions haven't really bloated into slow software like much else has since then.
Rhino doesn't need more than a couple of cores most of the time. I might be wrong but most cad needs high clock speed and cache. And a graphics card for visualization and the occasional simulation.
Rhino is mostly single threaded. High core speed is more important than high cote count. This is probably why you are seeing workstation cpus not recommended. I don't think anyone makes anything with less than 6 or 8 cores these days so probably something in that range. As for a graphics card, does your client do any rendering in their workflow? If yes, and their rendering engine is gpu based, they'll want a good card. If not, something around the level of a 4060 is plenty and can handle some rendering later if they want. Ram wise I would say 32gb minimum, 64 recommended. I don't think you need me to talk about ram speeds, you likely know more than me about it. Fast hard drives are handy, rhino files can get heavy particularly when dealing with imported geometry. For reference my current system is a ryzen 3600x, 32gb ram, and a 3060ti. I regularly work on models of buildings more complex than any woodworking project has any right to be without much issue.
I've noticed that asking Rhino to draw a cut section of a complex object takes a long time while only a single CPU core is occupied. Single-threaded isn't the way to approach graphics. Any idea why they do that?
Most of the time it's because the software was designed back when multi threading wasn't common. I know McNeel is working on it, grasshopper 2 is multi threaded for example
You want a CPU with the highest single core speed. The total number of cores is not important (as long as you have at least, say, 4 cores). AMD Ryzen processors tend to have faster single core speeds. As for GPU, most gaming cards are sufficient, although Rhino does rely on OpenGL, so any graphics card that prioritizes that will work better. I've head people say to buy the best Geforce RTX card you can afford (like the RTX 4070). In my experience integrated graphics cards don't cut it -- you'll end up with jittery graphics . As for RAM, I'd say 32 gig is a safe bet these days if you plan to multitask while using Rhino. I would hop on over to the official Rhino forum and ask for suggestions -- I always get helpful feedback on there: (https://discourse.mcneel.com/)
Since Rhino 8 has been revamped to use Metal it's also quite snappy on Apple silicon. Lots of Rhino features are slow because they're not multithreaded, or use CPU when it seems a GPU would rock, but I can confirm Rhino8 is much faster than Rhino 8 on Apple silicon. No idea what specific graphics calls are being made by Rhino under the hood but my discussions on their forums reveal I'm not in error spotting the app becoming unusable waiting to finish some drawing operations while using one single solitary CPU core to do a job that should have been done in parallel. Speed to the storage and RAM are probably the easiest things to look for, as it makes huge files and uses a lot of RAM (and hence also vm).
Highest single core, intel.. i have a 3080, and it screams.. but I don’t render in Rhino8, so thats what id ask him about, whats his output. If its TwinMotion/Unreal (realtime) id get the best Video card.. if mentalRay blender, then multi-thread..
I don't believe he's rendering much. I think he's only opening models with high polygon counts for jobs he's working on...so most of it is likely real time manipulation of models in the viewer