Will Phaser work with Rhino 4?

[Willallison]

Finally got round to upgrading to Rhino 4....
Will Phaser that I ran in R3 work with R4?
So far I can't even get setup to run on Windows 7...
So before I spend too much time mucking about with it... will it work anyway?

[Raggi_Thor]

Interesting question, so I asked McNeel. My contact there answered:

No - Rhino 3.0 plug-ins are not compatible with Rhino 4.0.

Please see the Orca3D web site about their excellent Marine Design software for Rhino. The same developers that wrote Orca also wrote RhinoMarine and Phaser.

www.orca3d.com

[Willallison]

Hmmm...
Thanks Raggi... bummer.... was hoping to get away with not having to upgrade everything in one hit....
Guess I could always run R3 separately with Phaser for a while...
I've also got RhinoStatics from Baseline Technology to give it a try, so we'll see how it all goes.
Thanks again.

[LyndonJ]

If phaser is now abandonware, unsupported and left to die along with the furious purchasers.

What is the legal status of the software?

Would you have any moral objection to upgrading yourself to phaser version 4 ?

[Willallison]

Sorry Lyndon.. not sure where you're coming from..?
Perhaps send me a PM

[Tad]

Rhino 4 is so much better at modeling (especially things like trimming surfaces) that it's worth using without the Hydro stuff.....

Just load your hull into 3 when you want hydro..

[Willallison]

Yes - that's my current plan, thank Tad

[Chris Ostlind]

There have been some bits written to allow support of previous Rhino 3 compatibles so that they work properly in R4. I'm talking about Rhino's own Flamingo and Penguin as the primary examples here. I have not seen that they have bothered with such companion, compatible programs, such as Phaser, and RhinoMarine, to this point and they probably will not, especially because those two have been abandoned by their makers.

That is said with the full understanding that McNeel, himself, said that Rhino would be available as a Mac program, "when hell freezes over", so take it for what it's worth.

Good move on the acquisition of R4, Will. You'll no doubt, by now, have discovered that the new i5 and i7 quad cores just flat fly the most complex of images as if they were 2D line drawings... with a truly fast video card, that is.

Have fun... I certainly am.

[marshmat]

Originally Posted by Chris Ostlind

There have been some bits written to allow support of previous Rhino 3 compatibles so that they work properly in R4. I'm talking about Rhino's own Flamingo and Penguin as the primary examples here. I have not seen that they have bothered with such companion, compatible programs, such as Phaser, and RhinoMarine, to this point and they probably will not, especuially because those two have been abandoned by their makers.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many legal ways to get around the abandonware issue. (Or illegal ways, for that matter- specialty stuff like RhinoMarine doesn't usually find its way to the warez market).

The alternative- buying updated copies of things you already have- is what keeps Autodesk turning a profit, year after year, on a product that was essentially feature complete a decade ago.

Good move on the acquisition of R4, Will. You'll no doubt, by now, have discovered that the new i5 and i7 quad cores just flat fly the most complex of images as if they were 2D line drawings... with a truly fast video card, that is.

Rhino was built from the ground up to run on low-powered hardware. Give it a quad-core Phenom II and a Radeon HD 5770 graphics card, and it is just screaming fast, even with thousands of objects and an ultra-fine render mesh.

Will, are you still having Win7 issues?

[Willallison]

When it comes to computers, I'm always having issues!!
I'm not by nature an IT wizard - I regard CAD as a wonderful tool that simplifies many of the design tasks that have to be performed... but I get way more enjoyment out of playing with a pencil and piece of paper.

Yes R4 is flying on my new laptop... so, fo that matter is everything else - though I'm still trying to load a few older (and one or two brand new) programs with mixed success. The compatability mode feature has solved most of my drama's though... thanks to all for the help.

As far as Phaser goes, I was going to run it on R3, but was rather horrified to discover that the essentially brand new disc that I bought some years ago will no longer work... not that uncommon apparently.... the theory going around is that the glue used to stick the label on eventually seeps thru and stuffs things up...

And, of course, I didn't make a back-up disc.....

It's still loaded on my old PC, but I wouldn't have the faintest idea of which files to copy, and where they are all located.....

The joys of modern technology.....