Mjules wrote:
Special thanks to McNeel for thinking and working for this market segment of the AEC industry. Otherwise, we would still use the same techniques used by Antonio Gaudi from olden days for architectural designs mimicking natural forms.
McNeel never created Rhino (or Grasshopper|) as tools for the Architecture or AEC industries.
Not specifically or originally at least.
Rhino was developed as a general design tool mostly for other industries (Product design, Nautical (Ship and boat) design, and aeronautical design, Jewelry design...etc.), and it was architects and designers who adopted it to their workflow to fulfill needs that weren't being address with their traditional toolsets.
I mean, sure McNeel have played their part and been very supportive in helping it get adopted in these other industries. But its in the nature of their development process that they've made the tool itself accessible in other fields outside their main target markets.
It's much the same way that Digital Project, used by the likes of Gehry or Zaha Hadid Architects was never a tool meant for architects before Gehry adopted the use of CATIA to help him realize his designs (specifically the Guggenheim Bilbao) which couldn't be feasibly done with traditional AEC tools and methods.
CATIA was specifically design for the aeronautical and airline design industry.
Gehry adopted it and later spun-off Digital Project which uses the same kernel or base but is geared towards architecture and the AEC industry. But it's out of the price range of most mortal architects and architecture firms, hence the reason a tool like Rhino comes into play which fills a lot of the same needs and functions, but at a much more realistic price range.
A lot of the reason why you see Rhino and Grasshopper being used and accessible in AEC is mostly thanks to the architects and architectural designers who adopted it (along with people like David Rutten who developed Grasshopper as a grad student as a side project and third party plugin before they fully integrated it into the program), and pushed for its use in the industry along with McNeel being supportive of the effort.
It shows what can happen and what you can get when you have both the users being fully engaged in the software and its development in a robust community, along with the developer themselves being fully supportive of the effort and open to it (and eager to be pushed to improve in areas they may not have envisioned themselves working in).
