Would you say that Rhino3D/Madcam is the easiest to use?

[HereinCS]

I'm looking at this combo. Would most people say that this is one of the easiest to use 3D CAD/CAM solution?

[bigalexe]

In my opinion for CAD I would say Solidworks is the easiest to use, I haven't used Rhino though.

[Dan B]

That would depend on what you are trying to do. For freeform, organic type models Rhino is far better. If parametric solid models are your thing, then Rhino isn't the best choice. I'm not saying you can't use Rhino, it's just not a parametric modeler out of the box (you can buy inexpensive plug-ins that will change that). You can model anything in Rhino, it's just a matter of how much effort you are willing to put into it.

Having said all that, here is what I recommend. Get Rhino and SpaceClaim. You don't necessarily need the professional version. If you buy Rhino, SpaceClaim Style and madCAM, you will be able to design, model, render if you wish, and cut anything you can imagine. And you will do it for less then the price of Solidworks. As for ease of use, yeah, definitely easy with the Rhino-SpaceClaim plugin that is included, and allows you to transfer Rhino models directly to SpaceClaim, do whatever you need to, then send it back to the open Rhino file. It's that easy. Of course madCam is easy too as you do your cutter paths right in your Rhino file.

Hope this helps,

Dan

[BobWarfield]

There are some fascinating posts about Rhino on this thread:

How do you use Rhino?

A fair number of people see Rhino as easier than a traditional parametric modeller. I certainly found it to be a lot easier than Alibre. I'm going to be trying it against Autodesk Inventor next and will report on that in CNCCookbook.

My problem with parametric models is they seem great for situations where you have to make a lot of tweaks over time to the drawing. For example, if a customer or designer keeps revising it on you. They seem most powerful when there is some separation between designer and machinist and lots of revising is going on.

However, if it's all the same guy, and you get past revisions and ready to make a part pretty quickly, I get a lot less value out of the overhead of setting up the parameters. At that point, I like a program like Rhino that just lets you power on through your 3D model.

Cheers,

BW