speckle.works

83 members

Description

Speckle does stuff with Grasshopper and the Internet (usually). 

Speckle has quite a rich, albeit short, history: 

1. Speckle The First: http://speckle.xyz

Speckle The First simply allows you to upload geometry to a server and then view it online from anywhere. 

2. Speckle The Second: http://beta.speckle.xyz

Speckle The Second allows you to precompute a discrete portion of your solution space and then play with it online by manipulating sliders, through some quite primitive sliders. 

3. Speckle The Third: http://streams.speckle.xyz

Speckle The Thirds does the same as Speckle The Second (see above), but better and is wrapped in a more attractive ui. 

All the above were experiments in developing a protocol for design data communication that is easy to use and just works. 

Forward to now: https://speckle.works

Speckle enables data rich collaboration between designers: structure your own communications channels and evolve complexity gradually, from simple geometry to fully integrated BIM-like “smart” objects.

Check out the tutorials: 

1. How to install

2. How to send and receive data

3. How to build your own bim

Speckle is Open Source, released under the MIT Licence. That's polite language that you can do whatever the f*** you want with it, including taking the code and start selling it for a profit (as long as you credit). 

Another important thing to note is that we are taking feature requests and we do ask questions, but not in the grasshopper forum: 

We hang out on slack and on the discourse forum.

 

Comments Discussions Members

Some Questions

by Gwendolyn

Nov 25, 2015

Hello! I've been playing around with Speckle this week and must say that this is the most convenient way to accessibly share 3d models online that I've used yet. Well done. That said, I have a big ol' list of questions and observations to run past you...

  • Is the geometry that gets uploaded to Speckle secure? Would anyone be able extract the information? 
  • Do the uploaded models/URLs stick around forever? I know that I've done bunches of useless models just in my experimentation; I'd hate for them to be taking up space that could be better used. Maybe there could be a way to delete them after a while?
  • Will this service continue to be available for free?
  • Are there any plans to add non-polyline Curves to this? 
  • Or a way to apply display materials?
  • Or any other display options? I ask mostly because I find the flat color mesh display difficult to see details in (even when Shadows and Edges are turned on), especially compared to the Rhino Shaded preview.
  • I can't get the Named Views to work right in the upload. They always end up extremely zoomed in to 0 in the Speckle model, when in Rhino I've set them up to be zoomed out to the whole model.
  • Speaking of, the perspective in the Speckle preview seems really extreme; I'm unable to get some views of a model that I can get in Rhino. Maybe have an option to toggle between a perspective and parallel view?

There might be others, but I'll leave it at this for now. :p Thanks again for this nifty tool.

  • up

    Dimitrie Stefanescu @idid

    Hello Gwendolyn,

    Good that you emailed me as well, didn't spot this! Thanks for the feedback.

    My answers below: 

    • Is the geometry that gets uploaded to Speckle secure? Would anyone be able extract the information? 

    It is as secure as I can make it :) Re extracting the information, it's not straightforward, but it could be possible. Whatever ends up in in the browser is inherently copy-able. I don't know of an easy way to do it though. 

    • Do the uploaded models/URLs stick around forever? I know that I've done bunches of useless models just in my experimentation; I'd hate for them to be taking up space that could be better used. Maybe there could be a way to delete them after a while?

    Right now they do. The server is doing fine re storage space, and the costs are rather marginal (three pints of beer a month). Future plan is to generate one unique url for each component, rather than have them re-generate over and over every time you double click (a new upload would require dragging a new component on the canvas). 

    • Will this service continue to be available for free?

    Yes, sure. It will be open sourced soon enough even. 

    • Are there any plans to add non-polyline Curves to this? 

    Well, yes, they already are supported. See the little antennae in this example? They are exported curves from rhino. In order to render them you still need to transform them into polylines. I can increase the detail, they're a bit too polyline-ish.

    • Or a way to apply display materials?

    Oh the future is bright, but time constrained. There's a plan for speckle.xyz/edit/modelname where you would be able to do that, but it's not a priority right now. 

    Until then, you can add colour to your meshes in Gh! 

    • Or any other display options? I ask mostly because I find the flat color mesh display difficult to see details in (even when Shadows and Edges are turned on), especially compared to the Rhino Shaded preview.

    You can press "z" on your keyboard for some psychedelic, but accurate, views. 

    • I can't get the Named Views to work right in the upload. They always end up extremely zoomed in to 0 in the Speckle model, when in Rhino I've set them up to be zoomed out to the whole model.

    Mmm, I should look into this. If you're up for it, can you send me (hello@dimitrie.org) the link where this happens? And/or the rhino + gh model? 

    • Speaking of, the perspective in the Speckle preview seems really extreme; I'm unable to get some views of a model that I can get in Rhino. Maybe have an option to toggle between a perspective and parallel view?

    It's on the feature request list :) 

    Again, thanks for the feedback - it's great to hear from you!

    Warm regards,

    Dimitrie

    Dec 7, 2015