Customer Reviews

Inside Rhinoceros 4

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

McNeil, the company that produces Rhino, produce a level 1 and level 2 course for beginners and intermediate students, respectively. This book essentially covers everything that both of those original courses cover, in addition to most of the content from the instruction manual that comes with Rhino, all with (for the most part) significantly better designed examples. The author even goes into great depth as to how to use every last sub-command.

The problem is, right from the very first exercise, the author has written this book under the assumption readers have been using Rhino (or another kind of product design CAD) for at least 6 months. If I tried to use the book's first two exercises on my beginner Rhino students, they would be traumatized!

As far as the organization goes, this book feels as if the author is trying to teach you the Level 2 Rhino course first, with elements of Level 1 thrown in along the way. While he does use some fantastic abstract examples of every single process, the practical applications don't appear nearly as often as they should.

All in all, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who has already taken BOTH of the Level 1 and 2 standard McNeil courses. For those who know the interface enough to fearlessly experiment, it will help provide some valuable additional insight into all the existing commands they know. For anyone else, you're better off learning the basics elsewhere.

This is a ref manual, there are no (or very few) tutorials.

The instructions are very concise, but offer no explanations. Every instruction refers to the companion cd with as few printed graphic examples as they could get away with. (rating: minus 1 star) However, that does keep the book to a manageable size, instead of being one of those 5" thick "bible" guides.

Obviously this is a copy and paste of the version 3 book, as there are obselete functions outlined and files missing from the CD. (rating: minus 1.25 star)

The book physcially is a good usable size. It stays open by its self when placed on a table and opened to the middle 80% of the pages. (rating: plus 0.25 star)

The files on the CD are zipped, so you can not browse to them directly.

I would buy this again as a second Rhino book, but this is not for the Rhino uninitiated.

This is absolutely useless if this is your introduction to 3d modelling. There are very few illustrations,that explain whatever it is the author is trying to explain. There are many instances where the author writes, choose this icon or that icon, but never bothers to show us what these icons look like. The author claims that the book is non linear, which it is, none of the concepts are touched on, none of the terminology is explained, etc... I was going to use it as a textbook for a Rhino class I teach at a high school, but I wouldn't reccommend this for anyone except those with a firm foundation in autocad or Rhino. Unfortunately, this book is the only game in town.

This book was fair, but I have to say I didn't learn much from it. I think it dealt with Rhino as if it is just a way to draw 3D geometry rather than treating it as a tool to create industrial design product data. It was a bit simplistic, and avoided questions that would help you understand why you were doing things.

I read about 2/3 of the book and lost interest.

I find this book totally complete in content. It is very clear in the way its written and it has been really useful.
All the concepts are clearly explained and it even has a CD with excercises and digital content.

I think that this is a quite good instrument, but there are few tutorials. The few tutorials you'll find on the text are not so good: too easy and they approach only small elements. Only one complete exercize (the first one) and the final result is no prof.

Learning Rhino, this book is not the way to go. I have never read such a bad manual. There are so many mistakes, steps that are left out which make it impossible to complete the task. Also there are a lot of grammatical errors. Not user friendly. I will abandon this book (I am half way through) and try the tutorials that come with the software. A complete waste of money!

I think taht is a very good book.
With a detailed explanations of every aspect of rhinoceros software.
I recomend it.

Takes you through everything, start to finish. If you're brand new to Rhino then I'd highly recommend this book along with any other literature you can get ahold of. Also dont be afraid to spend some coin on a few instructional DVDs and downloads. They're all worth it.

The book is a great guide for those seeking to learn Rhino. The book is simple to follow and the book hits everything you always wanted to know about rhino 4.0.