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Rhino 8 SR35, Rhino 9 BETA and Grasshopper 2: what changed this summer

Rhino 8 SR35, the Rhino 9 BETA builds, Grasshopper 2 in beta, rhino3dm 8.32 and Rhino.Compute on Linux, read from McNeel's own posts.

· 4 min read · rhino · news · grasshopper · python · pipeline

Most McNeel news goes out as forum posts, not press releases. This is a TD's summary of the last few months, read from McNeel's own forum. Dates are posting dates.

Rhino 8: Service Release 35

Rhino 8 SR35 (8.35.26251) came out on 8 September 2026 for Windows and Mac. Rhino updates itself unless you have turned updates off. Service releases have been arriving about once a month: SR31 on 12 May, SR32 on 9 June, SR33 on 14 July and SR34 on 11 August.

The SR35 items that matter to people who write code:

  • RhinoCommon fixes: Layer.SetCustomSectionStyle() silently did nothing on a document layer (RH-97334), a crash when joining breps from a deferred query (RH-97586), and DisplayPipelineAttributes.UseSectionStyles was inverted (RH-97671).
  • Grasshopper performance: the annotation preview had been exploding text outlines on every solution, a severe slowdown that came in with 8.33 (RH-97188).
  • Script editor: project publish now adds the .resources file to the solution (RH-97297).
  • SDK additions: a way to set a font by name when it is not installed locally (RH-97829), and the document distance display mode is now exposed (RH-97163).

A few scripting fixes from earlier in the summer are worth knowing about if you skipped an update. SR32 made the script editor launch its Python 3 subprocess with the -I flag (RH-94776). SR33 fixed the Python shell running conda init when it opened (RH-95910). SR34 fixed rs.ObjectLayout(obj) moving objects (RH-96724) and added a RhinoInstallRepair.exe tool on Windows (RH-96667).

Rhino 9 BETA

New work for Rhino 9 happens in the Rhino BETA, which needs a Rhino 8 licence to download and run. The newest build listed there is 9.0.26258, posted on 15 September 2026 for Windows and Mac. Builds have been arriving weekly.

Items from recent BETA notes that touch pipeline work:

  • An "AI: Connector" section has started to appear in the notes. The 9.0.26251 build (8 September) fixed "Rhino MCP disconnects when importing a model" (RH-97570) and script output being lost when calls overlap (RH-97438).
  • Headless Linux: 9.0.26230 (18 August) fixed headless Linux hanging while it waited for input (RH-97806).
  • USD: 9.0.26244 (2 September) fixed USD export writing only one block instance (RH-88698) and not being able to export only blocks (RH-88697).

McNeel also writes up individual BETA features. Two for look-dev people: a new Concept display mode (30 June), which draws soft shadows, a gradient background and emphasized silhouettes. And lighting through clipping planes (24 September): in Rhino Render and the Raytraced viewport, a "Product" preset removes clipped geometry completely so light comes in through the cut. The "Architecture" preset keeps the old behaviour.

Grasshopper 2 is in the BETA

McNeel's Grasshopper 2 (Beta) post (30 July 2026) describes GH2 as a ground-up rewrite with a new solver, a new data model and a new interface. It ships in the Rhino BETA and installs alongside Grasshopper 1: run the GH2 command to open it, and both can be open at once.

The parts that will interest Houdini people most:

  • Every data item can carry meta data (names, values, tags) that you can filter, sort or assign by further down the graph.
  • The solver runs across your cores, and you can cancel a solve that is running.
  • Native looping: a cluster can feed its own output back into its input, with the number of iterations set by a Loop Repeats pin.
  • Shout publishes a named value that any parameter expression downstream can read, with no wire needed.
  • Display rules control viewport colour and visibility per object without baking.
  • C# and Python 3 script components run on the new script editor stack.

The limits are just as clear. GH1 and GH2 are not at feature parity yet, and McNeel says to keep production work in GH1. GH1 plugins do not load in GH2, and the GH2 SDK is still changing. You can open GH1 files in GH2, but McNeel does not recommend it. GH1 itself keeps getting updates. The 9.0.26237 BETA (26 August) had a batch of GH2 fixes, including expression parsing on locales that use a comma as the decimal separator (RH-97053).

Compute and rhino3dm

Rhino.Compute on Linux (18 March 2026) is part of the BETA, Grasshopper included. It officially supports Ubuntu Server 24.04 and Amazon Linux 2023 on x64 and arm64, installed with apt or dnf from McNeel's own package repositories. Core-Hour Billing is the only licensing option on Linux. McNeel labels it BETA and does not recommend it for production.

rhino3dm 8.32 (17 August 2026) matches the openNURBS source in Rhino 8.32. It adds a SubD read API for Python and JavaScript, Brep topology classes in Python, GetTightBoundingBox, faster loading of large models in JavaScript, and a Python 3.14 target.

Sources

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