[1ctoolfool]

anyone know the pros/cons of rhinoart vs. mastercam art?
they look identical.
capabilities or limitations?
thanks

[chmillman]

There's probably a significant price difference... RhinoArt is $500. I haven't seen a lot of development in the RhinoArt area, I really don't know how much they're working on it, though. RhinoArt does not do any CAM, it just creates the meshes, so you need RhinoCAM as well, or some other machining software that can take mesh objects.

All the "...Art..." programs work more or less the same way - using various mesh generation algorithms to create low relief 3D objects from 2D artwork or curves. ArtCam is the clear industry leader in this area, but it's very expensive...

In Rhino itself you can do some relief stuff with the "Heightfield" (NURBS) and "MeshHeightfield" commands. There are also one or two free programs that actually generate NURBS relief surfaces from flat art and images. --ch