Grasshopper
EleFront
EleFront is an add-on that allows the user to bake geometry, annotations and blocks with user defined attributes and or Rhino attributes. Rhino objects can be referenced and filtered dynamically, to be used in Grasshopper.
Full description and download from:
http://www.food4rhino.com/app/elefront
The discussion group below is the best place for asking questions and discussing the usage of the add-on.
Baking Nested Linked Blocks
Hi, I would first like to thank the Front team for a really great add on that takes Grasshopper to a whole other level as far as production is concerned.
I'm currently running into an issue with where I want to make a "Defined Linked Block" but this new block object would contain linked blocks as the geometry. Basically, I want to nest linked blocks, this would be really handy for sub assemblies.
The simplest way to run into the issue is to insert a linked block, then connect that linked block as the geometry. I get an error that something went wrong and to check the data tree structures. However, I ran into the issue even when running a simple test with a single block being passed - so the issue doesn't seem to stem from a data tree structure. When connecting a simple inserted block rather than a linked inserted block, I don't run into the issue.
Ramon van der Heijden
Hi, Sorry for the late response.
What you are experiencing is indeed the current state of affairs. In order to actually handle contents from a linked block, an instance of that block needs to be present in your active Rhino session. This is easy to do. You can bake all linked blocks to a hidden layer. Now you can refer to these instances using the "Insert Block" component and the same block name.
In case your external file gets modified, all you have to do is update your blocks. The Grasshopper definition will now work properly again with the linked blocks.
Hope this helps.
Jul 4, 2017