Troubleshooting

Fixes for the issues you're most likely to meet with Rhino.Inside.AutoCAD. If none of these resolve your problem, reach out on the McNeel forum — we're happy to help.

The toolbar is missing after an update

Symptom: After updating Rhino.Inside.AutoCAD (or Rhino.Inside.Civil3D) to the latest version, the commands such as RHINO and GRASSHOPPER work, but the toolbar icon buttons are not visible on the first launch of AutoCAD / Civil 3D.

Quick fix: Restart the application — the toolbar should then appear. If it still doesn't, run the RHINO command once and then restart the application again.

Better fix: Uninstall the previous version before installing the new one. This avoids the problem entirely.

Why this happens

AutoCAD caches each toolbar the first time it loads. If the newer version of RiA modifies the toolbar settings, the problem can appear when the older version of RiA isn't uninstalled first:

  • The old, cached toolbar is left in place. When AutoCAD first loads the updated version, it uses that stale cache instead of the new settings.
  • Because the cached toolbar points to DLLs that no longer match, AutoCAD can't load it, so it gives up and discards the cache.
  • On the next restart, AutoCAD builds a fresh cache from the correct settings, and everything works as expected.

So the fix is either to uninstall the old version before installing the new one, or to simply restart AutoCAD once after the first launch to force the cache to rebuild.

The plug-in didn't load at all

If there's no toolbar and the RHINO command isn't recognised:

  • Make sure AutoCAD was fully closed during installation, then reinstall.
  • Confirm you're on a supported version — AutoCAD 2024, 2025, or 2026 (see Prerequisites).
  • Confirm Rhino 8 is installed and licensed on the same machine.
  • Restart AutoCAD and check again.

Permissions. Rhino.Inside.AutoCAD is confined to the user's AppData\Roaming folder, so no elevated/administrator permissions should be required to run the application in a standard setup. If you find that elevated permissions are needed, please let us know.

"This version has expired"

Symptom: Running a command shows a dialog reading "This version of Rhino.Inside.AutoCAD has expired. Please download the latest version."

Why: Beta builds are time-limited — each build expires 180 days after it was released. This helps us keep everyone on a recent build so we can manage and stay on top of bugs.

Fix: Use the dialog's download button, or download the latest version from the product page for your host — AutoCAD or Civil 3D. When updating, remember to uninstall the old version first (see The toolbar is missing after an update).

Rhino licence issue

Symptom: Rhino fails to start inside AutoCAD with a licensing message, or the Rhino window never appears after running the launch command.

Why: Rhino.Inside.AutoCAD loads Rhino's engine into the AutoCAD process, so a valid, licensed Rhino 8 is required even though you're working from inside AutoCAD.

Fix: First, try to open Rhino 8 on its own, independently of AutoCAD:

  • If Rhino 8 opens normally on its own but won't run inside AutoCAD, the licence is fine — reach out to us so we can help.
  • If Rhino 8 won't open at all because of a licensing problem, the issue is with your Rhino licence itself — please contact McNeel directly to resolve it.

Still stuck?

If none of the above resolves your issue, get in touch on the McNeel Discourse forum. Describe what you did, your AutoCAD / Civil 3D and Rhino versions, and what you saw — it also helps to mention anything from the logs under %APPDATA%\Bimorph\RhinoInsideAutoCAD.

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