Licensing Rhino and Grasshopper Add-ins with Devolens

If you’re building and selling add-ins for Rhino or Grasshopper, licensing quickly becomes part of your product.

Most teams need to support:

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• Payments and renewals
  ‍
• Seat or device limits
  ‍
• Feature-based editions
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• Trials and subscriptions
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• Offline or restricted environments (common in B2B)
  ‍

Devolens provides a licensing layer that works across Rhino, Grasshopper, and related tools, without forcing you into a Rhino-only ecosystem.
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Common Approaches to Rhino Plugin Licensing

Teams usually start with one of these options.

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Cloud Zoo and Food4Rhino

Rhino’s native ecosystem provides:

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• Built-in distribution through Food4Rhino
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• Rhino-native licensing via Cloud Zoo
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• Familiar experience for Rhino users
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This works well when:

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• Your product is strictly Rhino-centric
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• You don’t need advanced licensing models
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• Your customers are always online
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But it often lacks:

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• Flexible seat or device control
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• Floating or concurrent seats
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• Feature-based editions
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• Usage-based models
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• Strong offline support without extra setup
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• End-to-end billing and invoicing
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Many teams end up adding their own payment and licensing layers on top.

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Devolens (Dedicated Licensing Platform)

With Devolens, Rhino plugin vendors can:

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• Use one licensing system across Rhino, Grasshopper, and other CAD/DCC tools
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• Support advanced models (floating seats, node-locked, feature flags, usage-based)
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• Run licensing in online, offline, or air-gapped environments
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• Use any payment processor or internal B2B billing
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• Keep Food4Rhino for discovery while running licensing independently
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This is especially useful when Rhino is part of a broader toolchain rather than the only platform.

How Licensing Works for Rhino and Grasshopper

A typical setup looks like this:

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• Define licensing rules (features, seats, limits, trials)
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• Add a license check inside the plugin
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• Distribute the same plugin to all users
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• Unlock functionality through entitlements
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• Convert trials to paid without reinstalling
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This allows you to ship:

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• One plugin build
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• One licensing integration
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• Multiple pricing plans
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Without maintaining separate editions.

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Supported Tech Stack

Rhino and Grasshopper add-ins are most commonly built using C# / .NET, which is fully supported by Devolens SDKs and APIs.

Teams typically integrate licensing using the key verification flow, which lets the plugin validate a license and read its entitlements.

Below is a simplified C# example showing how a Rhino plugin might validate a license.

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var licenseKey = "GEBNC-WZZJD-VJIHG-GCMVD";
var RSAPubKey  = "your RSA public key";
var auth       = "access token with Activate permission";

var result = Key.Activate(token: auth, parameters: new ActivateModel {
    Key = licenseKey,
    ProductId = 3349,
    Sign = true,
    MachineCode = Helpers.GetMachineCodePI(v: 2)
});

if (result == null || result.Result == ResultType.Error ||
    !result.LicenseKey.HasValidSignature(RSAPubKey).IsValid())
{
    Console.WriteLine("The license does not work.");
}
else
{
    Console.WriteLine("The license is valid!");
}

Business Benefits for Rhino Plugin Vendors

Using a dedicated licensing platform provides:

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• Flexible pricing models without custom infrastructure
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• Easier support for enterprise customers
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• Centralized license management
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• Reduced internal maintenance
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• Better control over upgrades and renewals
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Instead of relying on Rhino-specific mechanisms only, licensing becomes a product-level capability.

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Technical Capabilities

Devolens supports common Rhino licensing requirements:

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• Node-locked licenses
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• Floating or concurrent seats
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• Feature-based entitlements
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• Usage tracking and metering
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• Offline activation with signed, time-limited tokens or a license server
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• Central dashboards and analytics
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This makes it suitable for:

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• Commercial Rhino plugin vendors
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• Engineering consultancies
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• Enterprise customers with restricted networks
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• Government or research environments
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Getting Started with Devolens

If your Rhino or Grasshopper add-in needs more than basic Rhino-native licensing, licensing becomes part of your product infrastructure.

You can create a free account and experiment at your own pace — no production commitment required.

Our documentation page has detailed guides and code snippets for a quick and easy implementation so you can add licensing to your Rhino and Grasshopper plugins that scales with customers, pricing models, and environments.