# 3D Design / 3D Scanning / 3D Modeling > 3D Modeling, Design, Scanners >  Rhino3d or Cinema 4d

## davide445

Did have some short experience with C4D and AFAIK is not a solid modeling software, so other choice is Rhino.

Will like to do both modeling useful for printing and also animation, mograph and rendering for more interactive and marketing related activities.

C4D will be a mess for 3d printing or can be an all round program? Rhino is so more difficult to learn?

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## Entity

Gday,

I do 90% of my print designs using Cinema 4D, took awhile to get my head around it, It`s great for fine detail adjustments and you get set desired polygon counts as high as you want depending on how many alterations you require to your object. I have tried Rhino5 but only rarely use that ( haven't given it a fair chance to be honest ). I have tinkered around with Solidworks & AutoCAD but purely because of the hours I have put into C4D that's my prime design software for printing atm. Plus squillions of you tube tutorials out there no matter which one you decide to go for.

Cheers

Cheerss

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## awerby

Rhino is a NURBS surface modeler, it's not a solids modeler. You can make a sort of solid by attaching surfaces together, but it's hard to get things perfectly watertight, particularly if the surfaces have edges with problems. 

C4D has its roots in modeling for animation, so it's good at making 2D renderings, but I doubt it's an optimal tool for creating solid models either. I'd say that if making 3D prints is important to you, that you should keep looking - there are lots of 3D modeling software alternatives out there these days.

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## jimc

rhino is a nurbs modeler that is true but its whole purpose is to design perfect solid watertight models. nurbs are just the type of lines you build your model with. its industrial design software designed for making models that are going to be produced so its function is making solid watertight models. while you can produce surfaces as well, it is a solid modeler. if you end up with a model that is not watertight then that comes down to a sloppy workflow. rhino is easy to learn, powerful and absolutely perfect for producing model for 3d printing, injection molding or inc milling, etc. if your looking for sculpting type models then its not for you. rhino is very heavily used in jewelry, toy, marine, furniture, architecture and your average consumer products. imo rhino is one of the best tools out there for producing models for 3d printing. if you goto infiniteskills.com they have complete video courses. beginner and advanced. they are very well done and will have you up and running with it in a day or two.

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## davide445

And what about Moment of Inspiration (MoI)?
Reading can be a easier to use alternative to Rhino.

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## Entity

Jimc,

Whats a good open source slicer program for preparing your models for printing, I tried slicr3 but it wont export 3xg files in a firmware version that my creator pro recognises.

Cheers

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## Sebastian Finke

> And what about Moment of Inspiration (MoI)?
> Reading can be a easier to use alternative to Rhino.


I grew up on Rhino (going back a long time, last one was Rhino 3, I think). It is a good program. Moi is written by the same guy that wrote the original Rhino code for McNeel. It is not as fleshed out as Rhino but is still very good, light-weight and easy to use. It so good in fact that I bought a license a few years ago. Then it was still V2. Then V3 came out and it is even better. At the price you can't really beat it. Just bear in mind: it is not parametric (neither is Rhino), doesn't have the import/export options of Rhino, doesn't have the AutoCAD plug-ins of Rhino and it only creates models i.e. no drawings, assemblies, etc. If you look on the Moi website you will see that users are getting amazing results.

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## davide445

> I grew up on Rhino (going back a long time, last one was Rhino 3, I think). It is a good program. Moi is written by the same guy that wrote the original Rhino code for McNeel. It is not as fleshed out as Rhino but is still very good, light-weight and easy to use. It so good in fact that I bought a license a few years ago. Then it was still V2. Then V3 came out and it is even better. At the price you can't really beat it. Just bear in mind: it is not parametric (neither is Rhino), doesn't have the import/export options of Rhino, doesn't have the AutoCAD plug-ins of Rhino and it only creates models i.e. no drawings, assemblies, etc. If you look on the Moi website you will see that users are getting amazing results.


MoI is beautiful but limited, the limitation in exchange and operate on AutoCad or other cad files is huge. I'm not a designer and will mostly check and modify others design.
Rhino is more complete but I did find it with awkward UI.
There is no other nice to use yet complete solid modeling / editing tool?

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## jimc

i don't know any of the open source slicers. i have been using simplify 3d for the past 2.5 years. 

as for rhino, not sure if any of you guys can qualify for the student version or not but that is really reasonable. if you are in school or you have a son or daughter or any other family member in school then you can qualify. you can get it from novedge who sells on eBay. its about $130. if your on a mac then the full mac version is fairly reasonable right now as well and the edu lic for mac is even cheaper....under 100 bucks i think. i use both. the key is to get yourself the videos from infinite skills. just watch both the beginner and advanced set and you will be using like a pro in no time. for a new rhino user i can't recommend those enough. i find rhino to be a very natural way to model. i have a bit of a woodworking background and find rhino workflow to be very similar to if i was to build something out of wood. someone mentioned the UI. the UI is extremely customizable. you can set it up pretty much however you would like. the command line is great. if you can't find that tool your looking for then just start typing the first few letters and the tool or command starts. very easy. sometimes i think of a tool i might need or something i want to do but don't know how so i just start typing and damn if a command or tool doesn't pop up in the list. its pretty crazy how extensive that piece of software is. you can download either pc or mac for free for 90 days. if you are interested in starting with it i may be able to help with some videos. just send me a pm.

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## Sebastian Finke

> MoI is beautiful but limited, the limitation in exchange and operate on AutoCad or other cad files is huge. I'm not a designer and will mostly check and modify others design.
> Rhino is more complete but I did find it with awkward UI.
> There is no other nice to use yet complete solid modeling / editing tool?


Why would you need the AutoCAD plug-ins? Your first post doesn't mention that.

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## davide445

> Why would you need the AutoCAD plug-ins? Your first post doesn't mention that.


Because I suppose most of our work is coming from others design, so we need to be able to deal with all formats.

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## Sebastian Finke

You won't get 3D files from AutoCAD, trust me. And if you're look into animation then you definitely won't need import into AutoCAD either. So unless you need visible dimensioning Moi may actually be the better tool for you.

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## Hugues

> Did have some short experience with C4D and AFAIK is not a solid modeling software, so other choice is Rhino.
> 
> Will like to do both modeling useful for printing and also animation, mograph and rendering for more interactive and marketing related activities.
> 
> C4D will be a mess for 3d printing or can be an all round program? Rhino is so more difficult to learn?


Check out 3DCoat. You can work with voxels, so solid modeling, and great tool used by 3D artist. And the license is around 100 USD only.

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## 24c

> the key is to get yourself the videos from infinite skills. just watch both the beginner and advanced set and you will be using like a pro in no time. for a new rhino user i can't recommend those enough.



Good point, I just got a 90 day trial Mac version a few weeks back, and the UI was lost on me coming from an Ashlar Vellum background many years ago, and never thought of chasing down the videos, even though I do for my default CAD package SharkFX (ViaCAD is a much cheaper alternative) once every blue moon to see what the new features do. :/ 

I'm also with *Hugues* too, 3D Coat is a useful program, and I've successfully used it to reduce my mesh sizes without loosing detail, to simplify the "Mesh2Nurbs" "Mesh2Analytic "conversions I do in CAD. Not ideal at the moment, as test scans of curved surfaces are broken up into smaller pieces, so I can't quite pull the surfaces as a whole yet, but derived shapes, I can redraw very quickly by slicing and using "Best fit" tools.

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## ekselsior

> Why would you need the AutoCAD plug-ins? Your first post doesn't mention that.


perhaps, davide need it to do some design in his cinema 4d print, or anyone else. as we know autocad will help us to designing some 3d or 4d object right, so why not... ?  :Big Grin:  :Wink:

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## Nihonddd

I'd say that if making 3D prints is important to you, that you should keep looking - there are lots of 3D modeling software alternatives out there these days.[/QUOTE]


I recommend Blender. The latest release has 3D printing tools.

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## anthony27

As others have suggested, try to stick to a Solid modeler such as Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, etc
Rhino is great and so is Alias, but these are harder to master and make 0 volume models, i.e surfaces, but they can be stitched to make them 'solid' for printing, it depends on your time and money situation,
I have used the following and I am proficient at most, Solid Works, UG NX, Inventor, Rhino, Alias, Autodesk Maya, 3D Max,, there also the cheaper options available,

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## Brumbaer

Watertight models are no problem with Cinema 4D. If you design models and not only prepare other peoples models for printing Cinema 4D is a good choice. If you mainly clean up designs, I'd look somewhere else.

Cinema 4D makes use of objects, which retain their parameters. So you can change or reuse your design easily. Deformers allow you to modify objects without the need to give up option to edit the object parameters. 
There is a number of cloners that allow you to multiply objects by arranging them in grids, circles etc. and on the surface of other objects. In addition the position of the elements can be modified randomly or by functions. Always retaining parameters. One of those factors is the number of vertices. So you can adjust the polygon count to your needs.
There are generators that create particles and animate them. You can use them to create/move your objects, have them animated until you have the effect you want and copy the geometry at that mark. Great for creating clouds, exhaust or nuke mushrooms and much more.
The same can be done with cloth simulation and/or physics.

You can also work on polygon level, but than you will have to turn the object in a set of polygons, giving up the ability to change the object by parameters.
One nice option when you work with polygons is sculpting. 

Cinema 4D has some quirks and sometimes it may expect you to do things differently, but I guess that is true for all applications, as is the fact that there is a learning curve.

I never had a case of a not watertight model.

As I said at the start, if you mainly design Cinema 4D is a good and, if you can adapt to it's way to do things a very good, choice, but if you do mainly cleanup look, I'd look somewhere else.

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