[monochrome]

My firm is considering purchasing Maxwell... we use Rhino / Sketchup.


We expect to install Maxwell 64 bit to take advantage of extra RAM. Are there any known issues with using the 32 bit version of Rhino in this situation? (Does Rhino offer an easy upgrade path to 64 bits?).

Thanks for any help.

[JDHill]

The architecture of Maxwell Render that you use is independent of the architecture of Rhino; if you use 64-bit Maxwell, you can render an MXS file of basically any size on your machine. The question is more: how do you create this large MXS file? And the answer to this depends on what the host application is capable of producing.

The limitations you will run into here center around the fact that the current official release of Rhino (version 4.0) is 32-bit only. So, to handle very large scenes, you would need to use the Rhino V5 WIP, which offers a 64-bit version, and is made available to customers who hold a current license of Rhino. Rhino alpha/beta releases are known for their remarkable level of stability, and this, along with McNeel's policy on maintaining good cross-version plugin compatibility, allow us to offer a 64-bit build of the Maxwell for Rhino plugin, which works with the 64-bit build of Rhino V5 WIP, even though this application is technically still in its alpha stage.

For more information on what this means with respect to plugin support, please see this post. Though what is discussed there must be the case, the fact is that many people use the 64-bit version of Rhino V5 WIP to good effect in their everyday workflow.