Robert McNeel and Associates headquartered in Seattle offers Rhinoceros 3D (or Rhino 3D), a 3D modeling and design application. Rhino can create, edit, analyze, document, render, animate, and translate NURBS curves, surfaces and solids, subdivision geometry (SubD), point clouds, and polygon meshes.
$995
one-time fee
Tacton Design Automation
Score9 out of 10
N/A
Tacton
Design Automation provides constraint-based and parametric engineer-to-order
automation inside SolidWorks, PTC CREO and Autodesk Inventor. With needs-driven design, CAD engineers can configure designs of complex products – including feedback on incompatible
choices - and automatically generate complete 2D drawings, 3D models and quote
documents. The configurator-powered Tacton Design Automation is designed to propose a solution that's not just buildable, but optimal for the…
One of the main highlights of Rhino is the built-in visual programming system "Grasshopper". It is widely used for parametric architectural design, by a variety of world-class architectural offices. It is also very popular within architectural schools and universities. Its usefulness has increased a lot by having add-ins, plug-ins, scripts, and integrations with Revit and ARCHICAD for BIM workflows.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
For design automation for SOLIDWORKS, I feel Tacton Design Automation is the best solution out there. It's simple to develop and implement for the design/engineering department. But can be implemented within the sales team as well with Tacton CPQ. When a company has products that are modular and/or have many sizing updates, this is where Tacton excels. If you have products that are completely customized, then Tacton or even design automation isn't the best suited for that.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Parametric Modeling - Grasshopper allows for easy/rapid iterative process
White box renders display - looks great as a quick diagram export with no post-production required.
robust command prompts - rhino was originally made for industrial design and it flexes a lot of unique modeling commands that put it up there with SolidWorks
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Tacton has a non-linear solver, meaning it can solve lots of equations without them being is a particular order. This enables the software to be incredibly flexible.
Tacton has a great interface to set up configurators for people to use. No knowledge of programming languages is required. The configurator uses equations similar to Excel equations to control what the users options are.
Tacton has the ability to easily add lists of data like product lists, beam or pipe sizes that because available for user selections or for calculations.
The Tacton configurator also automatically builds the user interface as you set up user inputs making it much easier to set up then competitor software.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Layout mode is probably the most lacking aspect of the software (within Tacon Design Automation Engineer). Something so powerful as having modular parts should be more heavily supported. Although, I've heard Tacton is focusing on updating this with better functionality.
The constraint editor does not display complex/lengthy constraints very well. I end up using Excel to visually break out in cells the different aspects of the constraint.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A majority of the support for Rhinoceros 3D does not come from the company itself, but from online forums and boards where other Rhinoceros 3D users outline their issues and solutions. The Rhinoceros 3D website does not offer much in-depth support and just outlines general how to's. At the same time, online forums allow for more specific issues to be addressed and solved by the Rhinoceros 3D community.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It's hard to compare Rhino to other modeling software as Rhino is in a niche of its own. No other software (to my knowledge) is as customizable/programmable and has such a large community and such a large amount of free, open-source addons. Rhino (and Grasshopper) can be intimidating at first but once you get familiar with it and grow your toolbox with your own scripts, so much time will be saved
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Drive Works is the main competitor for the TactonWorks module of Tacton. We actually discovered DriveWorks and purchased it before we discovered Tacton and started to use it. Once we discovered Tacton we liked it so much better we dropped using DriveWorks and switched to Tacton. I think you could accomplish what you need to in DriveWorks, but it is easier to setup in Tacton and Tacton has alot of features that really can make your product configurators nice
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Time to produce submittals went from 1-2 weeks down to a couple of days. Then, once approved, normally to produce the fabrication drawings (70+ unique parts) it would take from 4-6 weeks. We can get it down to as little as a few days.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
