Sep. 28, 2022: Article updated after input from Autodesk.
Rhino3D, many an architect’s and industrial designer’s favorite sketching and conceptualizing tool, now has a cloud-connected path to Revit, most architect’s BIM application—at least in the U.S. This path, which goes from Rhino to Revit or from Revit to Rhino, is built by Autodesk.
Autodesk announced that the two-way data connector for Rhino and Revit has entered public beta. The connector allows architects to take the buildings—in part or in whole—that were conceived in Rhino and flow them into Revit, and vice versa.
The Rhino connector comes out of Autodesk Platform Services (formerly known as Forge), Autodesk’s developer platform that intends to provide internal and external connections, conveying geometry and data to and between their vertical applications. The Rhino Connector is the latest Data Exchange product. Connectors also connect to Microsoft applications, such as Excel and Slack using Microsoft Power Automate.
How Does It Work?
The first step to using the Rhino and Revit connectors is to enter the beta program here. After installing the Rhino Connector into Rhino, you can select the geometry you want to send to Revit and create a “data exchange” that will be published to Autodesk Docs. From there, you can access the data from Revit—or Inventor, in the case of a product design.
Autodesk says that the connector “makes it easier to share geometry and property data with Revit.” This means that you can also bring Revit data into Rhino, making a full circle of building context and design elements possible. These data exchange connectors establish a cloud-based durable link, so that as the design evolves, the exchange can be updated and the Revit and Rhino customers are kept in sync.
Who would not want data sharing between applications? Sharing is good for design software users, many of whom juggle different applications, some outside their core expertise or of general application, like those by Microsoft. (Autodesk can connect to Microsoft’s Power Automate.)
We have long dreamt of robust, error-free, dynamic connections between the data of different applications. What could be a more noble mission for software vendors? Yet, it was not that long ago that CAD companies (including Autodesk) guarded and fought to keep their file formats under lock and key. Indeed, CAD history is more about hoarding data than sharing it. Sharing data one way and with one shot is a good first step, bi-directional, dynamic sharing, as promised by this Rhino-Revit connection, is the ultimate goal.
Some Rhino fans may consider the Rhino Connector an admission by Autodesk of Rhino’s superior ease of use and modeling ability. Or is Autodesk giving up with its own concept modeling applications? Autodesk did create an application that would let architects easily conceive designs, very much like SketchUp, introducing Formit in 2012. It had also tried to encroach on Rhino’s turf, acquiring T-Splines, a Rhino add-on, in 2011—only to bury it in 2016. We are not aware of any significant penetration of FormIt in the conceptual design software market as the conceptual architectural design market appears to still be dominated by SketchUp and, to a lesser extent, Rhino. In addition to Rhino, architects also use another Robert McNeel product, Grasshopper, which lets you generate design programmatically. Autodesk has
hinted at a similar connector release for that product as well.