My first experiments began using grasshopper without references to Rhino geometry because a year ago I didn't have a hundred bucks to buy Rhino so I didn't want to use up the 25 saves on a Grasshopper model, After all Rhino does have a lot of geometry laid out within the "blank" document, it basically describes 3D space using a Cartesian Coordinate System right? Well, if that is true, than you can exploit it!

A year later and I've purchased Rhino, which is wonderful, but I've continued to practice creating models in Grasshopper without referenced geometry other than the coordinate system.

First I tried the 'Shift' Tutorial and was able to make a quite different form than was displayed but it was all the same, just added stuff onto the basic solution.

Now I am interested in Diagrids, the surface on 30 St. Mary's Axe, AKA the erotic gherkin in London. Diagrids are much more interesting to me than the same old, same old waffle grid. The grid is beautiful in it's own right, but its not compelling me to build any real things out of it, they are simply inefficient. One of the major hurdles to overcome is to make a structure that would make sense to the carpenter side of me (I am one.) Now we all know that grasshopper and pipes get along quite well, but nobody but a plumber builds things out of pipes, and he's more interested in solving different problems than an architecture student. Diamond Five which uses a VB script that is very nice attempts to address a solution that might just work.