Octopus

Information

Octopus is a plug-in for applying evolutionary principles to parametric design and problem solving. It allows the search for many goals at once, producing a range of optimized trade-off solutions between the extremes of each goal.

Also see octopus.E for custom evolutionary algorithms.

Download the latest version on food4rhino

It is part of a range of tools developed at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, and Bollinger+Grohmann Engineers.

search for single goal + diversity of solutions
search for best trade offs between 2 to X goals
improve solutions by similarity-goals
choose preferred solutions during a search
change objectives during a search
solutions' 3d models for visual feedback
recorded history
save all search data within the Grasshopper document
save a solution as a Grasshopper State
export to text or text files

Octopus introduces multiple fitness values to the optimization. The best trade-offs between those objectives are searched, producing a set of possible optimum solutions that ideally reach from one extreme trade-off to the other.

Based on SPEA-2 and HypE from ETH Zürich and David Rutten's Galapagos User Interface. Developed by Robert Vierlinger in cooperation with Christoph Zimmel, karamba3d.com and Bollinger+Grohmann Engineers.

To install:

Copy the .gha and .dll file into the Grasshopper components folder
Right-click the file > Properties > make sure there is no "blocked" text
Restart Rhino and Grasshopper

Some examples are provided here.

New commented examples and a brief manual are provided in the download of octopus on food4rhino.

Location: Vienna
Members: 412
Latest Activity: May 10

Discussion Forum

Octopus cannot start computing - phenotype? too fast for loops? 3 Replies

Hello all, I am having a problem with figuring out why Octopus cannot compute anything. The case is sailing yacht's rig (mast, spreaders + steel lines) multicriteria optimisation. The 1st criteria…Continue

Started by Mikolaj P.. Last reply by Mikolaj P. May 10.

Structural Optimization 3 Replies

Good Evening to everyone,I'm writing here because I'm trying to optimize a girder bridge for my thesis.I'm trying to achieve the less expensive construction material, with the problem of satisfy…Continue

Tags: Octopus

Started by Leonardo. Last reply by Thomas Wortmann Dec 23, 2018.

Automatically run solver and output best solution after N generations 3 Replies

Below is a schematic of what I want to do, namely:Trigger a solver like Octopus or Galapagos from within a definition (not by double-clicking the component), run the solver for a fixed number of…Continue

Tags: loop, optimization, evolutionary, Galapagos, Octopus

Started by Max Marschall. Last reply by John Harding Nov 10, 2018.

Spot the mistake(s)

Hi all,I'm trying to run the attached optimisation, but can't get Octopus to begin to update the sliders in my gene pool. What am I doing wrong?The logic (also explained in the notes in the…Continue

Started by Magnus Larsson Sep 20, 2018.

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Comment Wall

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Comment by fred labbe on December 8, 2014 at 7:18: Does the latest version of Octopus work with Grasshopper 0.9.0076.... download page says it is compatible with 0.9.0075.

If only works with 0.9.0075 any tips on where to find thta version of Grasshopper?

Thanks.

Comment by Dan Hou on September 25, 2014 at 1:55: What is the algorithm to calculate hypervolume metric? Is it HSO?

Comment by Andreas Wilde on July 30, 2014 at 3:12: Can Octopus pick the best solution itself? Where?

How does Octopus deal with multicriteria weighting and multicriteria scores?

Comment by Brian Ringley on July 7, 2014 at 7:20: Haha no prob. You should keep the Awesome tab for the next release. Thanks for all your work in this area.

Comment by Robert Vier on July 4, 2014 at 4:08: Oh this is a mistake in compiling the plug-in, this component was purely for development, and not supposed to be in the official release.

Sorry for the confusion,

Best

Robert

Comment by Brian Ringley on July 3, 2014 at 17:27: Ha I'm getting an "Awesome" tab when I load the Octopus.e gha. What is this thing?!

Comment by wil on December 21, 2013 at 5:01: Is there any version of Octopus that works with Grasshopper 0.9.0064? I can load the component, but it crashes whenever I delete it from the canvas.

Comment by Jesus Galvez on November 19, 2013 at 12:29: OK, it seems to be working. Only thing is on each start I only get one generation, instead of many. I guess I have to mess around with the options.

Also the text is very difficult to read. I didn't realize until now that there were numbers on the fields.

Comment by Jesus Galvez on November 19, 2013 at 12:20: Hello Abraham,

the files are unblocked. I can use the Octopus component and upon opening the example files I can see the results of the default calculation. But when I click Start again the log file 01_singleObjective_Diversification_OctopusErrorLog_20131119.txt says:

Error, reduction of environmental selection did not yield the correct archive size

I have previously used Octopus 0.1 flawlessly.