RhinoGold — Jewellery-Specific CAD Built on Rhinoceros 3D
RhinoGold — Jewellery-Specific CAD Built on Rhinoceros 3D
A plug-in for Rhino that adds parametric ring shanks, prong settings, pavé layouts, and gemstone libraries to the modelling environment
RhinoGold is jewellery-specific computer-aided design software, built as a plug-in for the Rhinoceros 3D modelling platform from Robert McNeel & Associates. The product was developed by TDM Solutions in Spain and is widely used in the trade for design-to-manufacture work — concept modelling, prong and pavé layout, ring sizing and shank generation, and the export of files for casting through lost-wax or for direct CNC milling. Within the jewellery CAD market, RhinoGold competes with Matrix (also Rhino-based) and with standalone platforms such as Firestorm CAD and 3Design.
Position in the workflow
The standard digital jewellery workflow runs from concept sketch, through CAD modelling, to prototype output via stereolithography or wax-printing, to investment casting or direct metal CNC, and on to setting and finishing. RhinoGold sits at the CAD step. Because it is built on Rhino — a general-purpose surface and NURBS modeller widely used in industrial design — it has the geometric flexibility of Rhino while adding jewellery-specific tools that would otherwise have to be built up manually.
Among the jewellery-specific tools are parametric ring-shank generators that take a finger size and a profile and produce a closed shank ready for further work; prong-setting tools that place stones from a library at calculated heights, with prongs of specified count and dimension; pavé layout tools that arrange small stones across a surface with specified spacing and orientation; and gemstone libraries that match commercial cuts and sizes to industry-standard parameters.
Output
RhinoGold exports STL files for 3D printing of wax or castable resin patterns, STEP and IGES files for CNC milling, and rendering output for client presentation. Many shops integrate RhinoGold output with stereolithography printers from EnvisionTEC, Asiga, or Formlabs, and with wax printers from Solidscape, in a closed loop that takes a digital model to a castable physical pattern in a few hours.
History and current status
RhinoGold was developed in the mid-2000s and went through several major versions before being acquired by the Italian software firm Gravotech in the late 2010s. Subsequent development has been continued under the Gravotech umbrella, and the product remains in active commercial use. Older versions are also still in service in many shops that have built workflows around them.
Strengths and limitations
The platform's strength is its tight integration with Rhino, which is itself one of the most flexible NURBS modelling environments available. A jewellery designer working in RhinoGold can drop into Rhino's general-purpose tools when the jewellery-specific tools do not cover a particular requirement — sweeping a custom profile along a guide curve, blending two surfaces with continuity control, building a complex parametric assembly using Rhino's Grasshopper visual-scripting environment. The price for that flexibility is a steeper initial learning curve than fully self-contained jewellery platforms.
RhinoGold's stone library covers the standard commercial cuts and sizes — round brilliant, princess, oval, cushion, emerald, marquise, pear, baguette — and is regularly updated to include newer cuts. Custom stones can be added by the user, and parametric stones with adjustable proportions are supported. Setting tools include the standard prong, bezel, channel, and pavé arrangements, with parameters for prong count, height, thickness, and angle.
In the trade
RhinoGold is one of several mainstream choices for shops moving from hand-fabrication to digital design. The choice between RhinoGold, Matrix, Firestorm, and 3Design is typically driven by cost, by the staff's prior Rhino experience, and by the rendering and library tools each platform offers. Shops with existing Rhino experience often adopt RhinoGold or Matrix because the underlying platform is familiar; shops without Rhino experience sometimes choose 3Design or Firestorm for a more self-contained environment. Pricing for RhinoGold sits in the mid-range of the jewellery-CAD market — more expensive than Rhino alone, less expensive than full enterprise CAD-CAM packages — and the licensing model has historically allowed perpetual licences with optional maintenance subscriptions.
For one-person studio shops and small custom-jewellery operations, the entry threshold is the cost of Rhino plus the cost of RhinoGold, plus a 3D printer (or a contract relationship with a printing service), plus training time. The total investment is significant but is recoverable from the labour savings on the first dozen or so custom jobs that the digital workflow handles more efficiently than traditional hand fabrication.
Training and learning curve
Adopting RhinoGold for an existing workshop requires both software training and integration with the broader digital workflow. Training materials are available from Gravotech, from independent training providers, and from the substantial community of users who post tutorials online. A jeweller with prior CAD experience can typically reach productive working level within several weeks; a jeweller starting from scratch — without prior digital design experience — may need several months of practice before producing client-ready work efficiently. The learning curve is genuine but is not so steep as to deter most workshops who decide to invest in the platform.
The integration question is broader than software competence. Workshops adopting CAD usually need to develop new client-presentation processes (rendering and revision cycles), new manufacturing workflows (file-to-print pipelines), and new pricing models (which reflect the shift in labour from bench fabrication to design and finishing). The CAD adoption is therefore a workshop-level project rather than purely a software purchase, and successful adopters typically commit to the transition deliberately.
Output formats and downstream workflows
Beyond the standard STL and STEP exports, RhinoGold supports formats specific to common downstream tools — wax-printer formats for Solidscape and ProJet machines, resin-printer formats for Asiga, EnvisionTEC, and Formlabs systems. Some shops chain RhinoGold with rendering software such as KeyShot or V-Ray for client-presentation visualisation, with the rendered images supplementing the technical drawings used in the workshop.
The platform also integrates with Rhino's Grasshopper visual scripting environment, which advanced users employ to build parametric design templates that can be reused across many similar jobs. A shop that produces a standard ring style with adjustable proportions might build a Grasshopper template that takes a finger size, a stone diameter, and a desired metal weight, and produces a finished CAD model ready for export — saving the labour of reconstructing the design from scratch for each variant.
Common workflow patterns
The typical workflow patterns for RhinoGold-using shops fall into a few recognisable categories. Custom-design shops use the platform interactively with clients, sometimes in remote sessions where the design develops over a series of revisions, with rendered images and rotating turntable views as the principal feedback medium. Production shops use the platform to digitise existing designs into a parametric library, allowing rapid creation of variants on a stable base design. Hybrid shops combine both modes, using the parametric library for production-pace work and reserving full custom design for higher-value commissions.
The transition from a paper-based design process to a fully digital workflow takes time and rarely happens cleanly. Most workshops continue to use paper sketches, hand drawings, and physical prototypes alongside the CAD platform, with each medium taking the role it serves best. The digital platform supplements rather than replaces the workshop's existing design vocabulary in the most successful adoptions.