Can Rhino produce
Solids and also layout drawings like with SW and IV and also does it allow you to work with solid modelling?
4 Answers
Wouldn't say an absolute no to this...
Yes you can make models "water tight" which can be considered a closed volume that you could consider a solid. There is also a "solids" menu which has some features that do just that.
What you won't find is a straight 1:1 environment like SW or IV when it comes to making drawings. You can make drawings in Rhino, but i wouldn't suggest walking in expecting it to look the part.
Rhino 4 and then particularly 5, fix the drawing drawback, especially if you have the "Penguin" plugin. I use it for all of my 2d illustration needs.
If need be you can create 2D drawings in rhino as well as solid models. small companies like mine use it because it is a cheap alternative to solid works but rhino is not industry standard. I can help out if you have any questions
Rhino on it's own can't produce professional dimesioned and annotated schematics automatically as per ASME Y14.5-2009 standard, but I think a plugin exists. The standard can be complied to nevertheless and I bet a library was done by someone, but I never needed to produce rigorous ASME schematics, and I use Solidworks as well. I believe Rhino has some important advantages over Solidworks, like it's better handling of free-form modelling, it's efficiency and speed (in my hands) and unique open source additions like python scripting and API and Grasshopper. Rhino has also become a de facto standard in Architecture and Jewelry.
