Getting started

Setup is three steps, and none of it touches your Rhino model.

1. Install from the Rhino package manager — the download button on Food4Rhino opens it at Antlion.
2. Buy a license. Checkout is run by Polar, and the email address you enter there is how you reach your key in the customer portal.
3. Register in Grasshopper — put the key in a Panel wired to Key on License, and set a Toggle on Register to True.

Right-click License to open your customer portal (Manage subscription) or to report a problem (Report a problem). Each step is spelled out below; after that, the workflow is where the first bowl gets built.

What you need

• Rhino 8 for Windows, with Grasshopper. Antlion is Windows-only for now.
• Rhino running on .NET Core — the current default. If Rhino was switched to .NET Framework mode for some other plugin, Antlion does not load at all and the tab never appears. Run SetDotNetRuntime in Rhino to check it, switch back, and restart.
• Millimeter or inch documents — both work.
• An internet connection when you register. After that Antlion checks in quietly in the background and rides out short network outages.

Install

1. In Rhino, run _PackageManager.
2. Search for Antlion and install it.
3. Restart Rhino.
4. Open Grasshopper. There is now an Antlion tab in the ribbon — what sits in each panel.

No tab after restarting? Rhino is almost certainly in .NET Framework mode. See What you need above; that one setting accounts for most “the components are not there” reports.

Antlion is distributed through the package manager only. We do not publish .gha or .yak files for download anywhere, so a copy offered as a direct file download did not come from us.

Updates arrive the same way. New releases of Antlion are published to the package manager. At the bottom of the package manager window, keep Automatically update packages when Rhino starts checked — it is on unless someone turned it off. Rhino then looks for newer packages shortly after it starts, installs them and asks you to restart; the new version runs from that restart. If you keep it off, run _PackageManager, select Antlion and click Install on the newer version. The changelog lists what changed in each release.

The Food4Rhino listing carries the product description and the purchase route — its download button opens the same package manager entry rather than handing you a file.

Antlion on Food4Rhino

Register your license

Downloading Antlion is free. The Util panel works without a license; the Bowl, Bowl Analysis and Table panels need one.

1 — Take the key from your customer portal. Purchases, billing and invoices are handled by Polar, the merchant of record for this product, and your license key lives in the customer portal there. Do not wait for it to arrive by email — the portal always has it. Enter the email address you bought with, type the code it sends you, and copy the key from the purchases page.

Customer portal: polar.sh/plugindevlab/portal

2 — Enter it once in Grasshopper.

• Antlion tab → License
• Paste the key into Key
• Set Register to True
• Status reports what happened

That unlocks every definition on this computer — it is not something you repeat per file.

Registering sends your computer name, your Windows user name and the date to Polar, so that you can tell your machines apart in the customer portal. Nothing from your models is sent — see the privacy policy.

One computer at a time. To move to another machine, release the old one in the customer portal and register on the new one. If a computer has been released, Status says so and tells you to flip Register again.

Where to go next

• Workflow — the whole chain as one diagram, and what order to use things in. Start here.
• Tutorials — video walkthroughs that build a stadium bowl step by step, with chapters you can jump to.

When something does not work

Start with Troubleshooting. If your symptom is not there, report it — no account needed.