[Edward1986]

I have already posted this in the off topic forum but no replies as yet, thought I'd post it here to see if I'd get more joy

I am a jewelery designer and use Rhino alot for my designs, I am looking at buying a jewellery specific plug-in and I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience of them. The three I'm looking at are:

Matrix 6
Techgems 4.2
RhinoGold

From what I can see Matrix looks like it has all the tools of the other two and more but I dont want to invest without a bit more info.

Any opinios would be very helpful.

Ed

[mapro]

Hi Edward,

I'm also jewelery designer and use also Rhino and VX. I have seen Matrix on the last fair and can tell you that it is a powefull tool. You have only to pay approx. 5000.- Euros.
I used the TechGems 3 Version in the past. I was happy with the existing stones. nearly all the other tools I was not using at all. In the meantime I use Rhino V4. I have to buy the new version of TechGem? No, I can handle it without any problems and import the stones via the IGES interface.
RhinoGold I do not know.

For me I would save the money and invest it in a good render tool.
I think it is not what you expect to hear but this is my personal opinion.

Marcus

[Edward1986]

Thanks Marcus,

Basically what I am looking for the software to do is to help me with the creation of stone settings, pave settings, claw settings ect.

I already have maxwell so that does all the rendering I need.

Thanks for your input

[ricardo]

Did you have a shot at RhinoGold? It's worth trying, there is a 30 day demo at the site.

There are some bugs around yet (as of version 1.0.3) but the automatic pave tool is quite powerful - much more powerful than ThechGems past ones at least. I had been showing it to a Matrix former user and the guy told me it fails in the same situations as Matrix would, very organic (twisty) shapes that is.

[caryjames]

Hi Edward: Matrix is actually built on a Rhino platform. They have gone and created wizards to make your life easier but if you are good at using Rhino you would not need Matrix. Maybe if you have money to burn and don't want to bother learning Rhino then maybe it would be good but at $10K it is not for me .

Rhino's tech support is GREAT, I downloaded the trial version 6 months before I purchased the program so that I could learn on my own. Their tech support department was the same for people who had not purchased the program as it was for the licensed users-- which is to say absolutely terrific. Sometimes I would be stumped with a problem, I could email the file to them and they would show me where I went wrong-- all this and I hadn't even purchased the program yet!!

In a lot of cases with the Matrix versions I have seen the wizards were good for certain situations (i.e plain wedding band or an eternity ring) but if you had a design that fell outside what the wizards could create then you needed to know Rhino anyway.

I also use Techgems and have found it good only for the stone models. I find it easier to just model what I need in Rhino and skip the wizards that Techgems provides.

I render everything in Maxwell and it works great. Feel free to PM or email me if you have any specific questions.
Cary