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Beta

These docs cover RhinoArtisan 7.0, which is still in beta. The contents are provisional: features and pages can still be added, changed or removed before the final release.

Productivity

Setting Up Assistant

Assistant talks to hosted models through OpenRouter, a single gateway to Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, DeepSeek, xAI and the rest. One key, every model.

You pay OpenRouter for what you use — RhinoArtisan adds nothing on top and takes no commission. There is no separate Assistant subscription.

1. Get an OpenRouter API key

  1. Go to openrouter.ai and create an account.
  2. Open Keys in your account menu and create a new key.
  3. Copy it. The key looks like sk-or-v1-… — keep it private, it is tied to your credit.

2. Add the key to RhinoArtisan

  1. Open RhinoArtisan → File → Settings (or Rhino’s Options).
  1. In the sidebar, select Artisan.
  1. Open the Integrations sub-item.
  1. In the OpenRouter group, paste the key into API Key.

Options → Artisan → Integrations

  1. Click OK. RhinoArtisan may ask you to restart so the change is picked up everywhere.

3. Choose the model

The same OpenRouter group has two dropdowns:

  • Assistant AI model — the model behind this panel.
  • Flow Studio model — the model behind Flow Studio, tuned independently because writing scripts and answering design questions are different jobs.

The curated list ships with the models we test against, with Claude Opus 4.8 as the default for both — frontier quality at a fraction of the top tier’s cost. Leave it alone unless you have a reason: a cheaper model for routine work, a different provider for a company policy, or a specific vendor your organisation has approved.

4. Open and dock the panel

Open File tab → Assistant, or run ArtisanAssistant.

The panel can be docked anywhere, but keep it out of the standard right-side panel stack — sharing that space makes both harder to use while modelling.

A good spot is next to the Curator panel: drag the Assistant tab by its title and drop it into the Curator area, and Rhino anchors it there.

5. Check it works

Type Hi! and press Send. A reply within a couple of seconds means the key, the model and the connection are all in order.

If instead you get an error, check in this order: the key is pasted in full, the OpenRouter account has credit, and the machine can reach the internet through any corporate proxy or firewall.