Since Rhino was launched, McNeel & Associates has built a whole ecosystem around Rhino and its rendering products. Kohn Pederson Fox Shanghai World Financial Center, modelled and rendered in Rhino. However, old and new clients still request AutoCAD training on old versions of AutoCAD.
Then the move to AutoCAD verticals arrived, with ever increasing targets, and with the Rhino software business growing the AutoCAD/ Autodesk relationship terminated. Autodesk moved to limit dealers selling out of fixed distance from their offices, which reduced their potential to grow, unless they opened multiple offices.
McNeel & Associates is now out of the AutoCAD dealership game. Today, McNeel claims to have 250,000 Rhino users worldwide, covering diverse industries such as marine, apparel, product design, jewellery design, analysis, CAM and architecture.
After three years Rhino eventually went commercial for a very reasonable price and, against all odds, the people who had been using it for free started to buy it. Bob was happy to get the software out there for people to find uses for it and let that drive development. I remember talking with Bob McNeel on what the give-away business model was about.Īt that time nobody gave software away and people were telling him that he was insane to do it. For years it was in development and the betas were all given away for free.
Users donÝt need to know how to program to create a parametric model using Grasshopper as there is a window for creating what amounts to a bank of geometry Ùeffects peddlesÝ, as you would with a guitar.Ī few years later McNeel began to develop a 3D NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline) modelling package named Rhino. McNeel hit my radar when his company started to develop AutoCAD add-ons and I reviewed AccuRender, its photorealistic Ùinside AutoCADÝ renderer when it was launched in the UK market. Bob McNeel is a trained accountant who fell into what turned out to be a very successful AutoCAD dealership in Seattle back in the Ùgood old daysÝ of early AutoCAD. IÝve known Bob McNeel for the best part of my journalistic career and you donÝt have to look much further to discover the reason for McNeel & AssociateÝs different take on the market. The consensus from competitors is that it shouldnÝt exist the way it is run, but somehow it does and very successfully. But then there is Robert McNeel and Associates, a company that appears to swim against this tide like an Alaskan Salmon dodging all the hungry bears to the spawning grounds. There are a few basic models and principles that seem to permeate through 99% of the industry. Having written about CAD and design technology for the best part of twenty years, you canÝt help but get very familiar with the inner workings of the CAD developers, how development happens, marketing is oriented, and how the route to market and sales are achieved. Kunsthaus Graz, Peter Cook and Colin Fournier.