whole design intent, but this is what Inventor is good at. The way it packages bits of 'scripted' components into 'little models' that can be stored and re-assembled is central to MCAD working.
The Inventor model shown is almost 5 years old. We don't model like that any more, however it does offer a good idea of general MCAD modeling approaches.
iParts is useful in certain situations, it could've been useful in the above model, its usefulness is often in function of the quantity of variants/configurations.
So much is scripted in GH, maybe it should also be possible to script/define/constrain/assist the placement/gluing of the results?
...
Starting point: I think we are talking across purposes. AFAIK, the solving sequence of GH's scripted components is fixed. It won't do circular dependencies... without a fight. The inter-component dependencies not 'managed' like constraints solvers do for MCAD apps.
Components and assemblies are individual files in MCAD.
Placement of these within assemblies in MCAD is a product of matrix transforms and persistent constraints. There is no bi-directional link, the link is unidirectional (downflow only), because of the use of proxies.
Consequently, scripting the placement of components is irrelevant in GH, unless you decide that each component needs to be contained in its own separate file.
This also brings up the point that generating components and assemblies in MCAD is not as straightforward. In iParts and iAssemblies, each configuration needs to be generated as a "child" (the individual file needs to be created for each child) before those children can be used elsewhere.
You notice the dilemma, if you generate 100 parts, and then you realize you only need 20, you've created 80 extra parts which you have no need for, thus generating wasteful data that may cause file management issues later on.
GH remains in a transient world, and when you decide to bake geometry (if you need to at all), you can do that in one Rhino file, and save it as the state of the design at that given moment. Very convenient for design, though unacceptable for most non-digital manufacturing methods, which greatly limits Rhino's use for manufacturing unless you combine it with an MCAD app.
One of the reasons why the distributed file approach makes perfect sense in MCAD, is that in industry you deal with a finite set of objects. Generative tools are usually not a requirement. Most mechanical engineers, product engineers and machinists would never have any use for that.
The other thing that MCAD apps like Inventor have, is the 'structured' interface that offers up all that setting out information like the coordinate systems, work planes, parameters etc in a concise fashion in the 'history tree'. This will translate into user speed. GH's canvas is a bit more freeform. I suppose the info is all there and linked, so a bit of re-jigging is easy. Also, see how T-Flex can even embed sliders and other parameter input boxes into the model itself. Pretty handy/fast to understand, which also means more speed.
True. As long as you keep the browser pane/specification tree organized and easy to query.
:)
Would love to understand what you did by sketching.
I'll start by showing what was done years ago in the Inventor model, and then share with you what I did in GH, but in another post.
Let's use one of the beams as an example:
We can isolate this component for clarity.
Notice that I've highlighted the sectional sketch with dimensions, and the point of reference, which is in relation to the CL of the column which the beam bears on. The orientation and location of the beam is already set by underlying geometry.
Here's a perspective view of the same:
The extent of the beam was also driven by reference geometry, 2 planes offset from the beam's XY plane, driven by parameters from another underlying file which serves as a parameter container:
Reference axes and points are present for all other components, here are some of them:
It starts getting cluttered if you see the reference planes as well:
Is I mentioned earlier, over time we've found better ways to define and associate geometry, parameters, manage design change, improving the efficiency of parametric models. But this model is a fair representation of a basic modeling approach, and since an Inventor-GH comparison is like comparing apples and oranges anyways, this model can be used to understand the differences and similarities, for those interested.
I haven't even gotten to your latest post yet, I will eventually.…
Added by Santiago Diaz at 10:36am on February 26, 2011
perienced with grasshopper, but so far I've managed to combine the following:
Giulio Piacentino's "Catenary arch from height" script
Pirouz Nourian's "Mobius" script (Obtained from a friend)
End Result:
Here's where I'm stuck: I want the mobius twist to revolve around the midpoint of the arch, but the script uses the input values to determine the endpoints, resulting in a weird sinuous shape when viewed from above. Also, the secondary end points (generated by the mobius script, determining the width of the surface) are generated by default along the z axis, resulting in an arch that only touches the "ground" at two points. I attempted to work around this issue by trying to force the zHeight parameter to correspond with the y axis (thus rotating the arch 90 degrees so it would lay "flat"), but the script interprets the third point as a value and not as an actual point to bisect. I thought this might be an issue with the C# component that I obtained from Giulio Piacentino's script, so I attempted to tinker around with the source code. Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in C# so I only managed to mess everything up (I've since recovered the code from the cache). Anybody got some ideas? -BC …
r graphics get saved as 24x24 pixel images before they are put into the grasshopper application, which means the icons look like crap when you zoom in. This is the aforementioned problem that needs to be addressed in GH2. There have historically been two approaches to this issue:
Provide pixel images with several sizes.
Render vector graphics directly.
Option 1 is common for apps that do not have variable levels of zoom, such as Windows Explorer. When explorer shows file icons it either shows them in 16x16, 32x32, 48x48, 96x96, or these days, various HUGE sizes. As a result *.ico files allow you put in different images for all these target sizes. Since Grasshopper has variable zoom levels, this is not an ideal solution. Also, it requires a lot more work per icon.
Option 2 is becoming more and more popular as increased graphics speed now allows for the real-time rendering of vector graphics. Yet, you still need a renderer that knows how to draw vector geometry crisply at low sizes. All vector renderers I know just interpolate the geometry linearly and if a line happens to end up 'between pixels' it's just fuzzy.
I don't have hard and fast rules for the icons, but I try to adhere to at least these:
Keep a border of 2 pixels free around the icon content. So basically only use the inner 20x20 pixels rather than the 24x24 you're allowed. This is needed because the drop shadow needs to go there.
Only draw silhouette edges around shapes, not inner creases. Typically a 1-pixel line will do. I prefer to use a dark version of the fill colour rather than black for edges.
Loose curves can be drawn in 1 or 2 pixel thicknesses, depending on how important the curve is.
Try to avoid text in your icons (not always possible).
Stick to 1 colour family per icon, preferably per icon family. You can add highlights with another colour if you must, but too many hues make an icon hard to read (for the example the [Voronoi] icon, it has red, green and blue and it's a bit of a mess, on the other hand [Colour Wheel] has the full spectrum and seems to work quite well...).
Very roughly speaking, if there's both black and red geometry in an icon, it means the red is component input and the black is component output.
Drop shadows are pixel effects, applied to the 24x24 image. They have a blurring radius of 2 pixels, a horizontal offset of 1 pixel to the right, a vertical offset of 1 pixel to the bottom and they are 65% black.
When you use high contrast shapes (for example black edges on a light background) the anti-aliasing provided by vector renderers such as Xara or Illustrator won't be enough to make it look smooth. I'd recommend avoiding high contrast if at all possible, but if not possible then draw a 1-pixel line around the dark bits in 95% transparent black. This effectively extends the anti-aliasing range from 1.5 to 2.5 pixels and it helps make things looks smoother.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com…
; GH, this one came out and rhinoceros is disappear...like this
it said " Rhinoceros5's working is stopped. because some problems occured so Rhinoceros5 can't work correctly no longer " then I have no choice but terminate Rhinoceros.
There are some discussion about RhinoIronPython installing numpy though, no one has same problem like me. so Please somebody tell me!!
and one more question...just in case, I tried to install numpy into ironPython2.7
C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7>ipy "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\ironpkg-1.0.0..py" --installBootstrapping: c:\users\owner\appdata\local\temp\tmp2nand1\ironpkg-1.0.0-1.egg 118 KB [.................................................................]
C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7>ironpkg -hUsage: ironpkg-script.py [options] [name] [version]
.
.
.
C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7>ironpkg scipyWrote configuration file: C:\Users\owner\.ironpkg=============================================================================Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\ironpkg-script.py", line 10, in <module> File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\enstaller\main.py", line 364, in main File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\enstaller\indexed_repo\chain.py", line 27, in __init__ File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\enstaller\indexed_repo\chain.py", line 67, in add_repo File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\enstaller\utils.py", line 92, in write_data_from_url File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 435, in open File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 654, in http_error_302 File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\httplib.py", line 1261, in __init__ File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\lib\site-packages\enstaller\utils.py", line 73, in open_url File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 154, in urlopen File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 547, in http_response File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 467, in error File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 429, in open File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 446, in _open File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 407, in _call_chain File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 1240, in https_open File "C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7\Lib\urllib2.py", line 1167, in do_openAttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute '_create_default_https_context'
C:\Program Files (x86)\IronPython 2.7>
how can I deal with this error?…
well, very similar input data must result in wildly different hashes. For example, imagine we have an algorithm which computes hashes of text, and the hashes it computes are all numbers between 0 and 999. We then apply this algorithm to a piece of text:
"When Spring comes back with rustling shade" = 385
So far so good. Now imagine we change the text slightly, for example by removing a single "l":
"When Spring comes back with rusting shade" = 973
Minor change -> very different hash. There are of course way more unique texts than there are numbers between 0 and 999. This must therefore mean that a lot of text will result in the same hash. For example "When Spring brings back blue days and fair." may also result in a hash of 385. Because of the pigeonhole principle, there is nothing to be done about this.
Now for the tricky bit. Hashes are often used to validate executable code. Say your friend James at MI6 sends you a small program that will allow you to eavesdrop on Angela Merkel, and -over the phone- he tells you the hashcode for that application. You can then hash the application yourself, verify that it indeed results in the same hashcode and then you know you can trust the executable.
But now Jack from the FBI intercepts the email and adds a few sneaky lines of code to the original application allowing him to determine from your internet search history with up to 95% accuracy whether you like extra cheese on your pizza. The application has now been tampered with, it can no longer be trusted and you should be able to figure this out as it will no longer result in the same hash code.
But wait! Some hashing algorithms are more secure than others. MD5 is now officially considered to be 'hacked' and it is no longer recommended for doing naughty spying. Specifically, Jack will be able to inject his own code in such a way that it does not result in a different hash. Instead, the SHA family of hashers are to be used, as it is not yet known how to trick these hashers.
This is where the problem comes in, because apparently the US government has forcefully disabled the use of MD5 for all purposes. This is a shame because I use it to quickly compare bitmap icons for identicalness so I only have to store an icon in memory once. There is no security hole due to this, because I'm not hashing secure data. MD5 is somewhat faster than SHA, and since I have to hash several hundred icons on Grasshopper start, I opted for the faster one.
(Very) long story short; you're hosed. Grasshopper uses MD5; USgov does not like; Grasshopper does not run on USgov computers.
I'll do some testing to see if I can switch to SHA and then we can see whether or not that solves the problem. This however will take a while as I'm going on a business trip next week and have yet to prepare my presentations.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com…
Added by David Rutten at 12:06pm on March 31, 2014
ed file and code below:
Color ColorAt(Mesh mesh, int faceIndex, double t0, double t1, double t2, double t3) { // int rc = -1; var color = Rhino.Display.Color4f.Black;
if( mesh.VertexColors.Count != 0) { // test to see if face exists if( faceIndex >= 0 && faceIndex < mesh.Faces.Count ) { /// Barycentric quad coordinates for the point on the mesh /// face mesh.Faces[FaceIndex].
/// If the face is a triangle /// disregard T[3] (it should be set to 0.0).
/// If the face is /// a quad and is split between vertexes 0 and 2, then T[3] /// will be 0.0 when point is on the triangle defined by vi[0], /// vi[1], vi[2]
/// T[1] will be 0.0 when point is on the /// triangle defined by vi[0], vi[2], vi[3].
/// If the face is a /// quad and is split between vertexes 1 and 3, then T[2] will /// be -1 when point is on the triangle defined by vi[0], /// vi[1], vi[3]
/// and m_t[0] will be -1 when point is on the /// triangle defined by vi[1], vi[2], vi[3].
MeshFace face = mesh.Faces[faceIndex];
// Collect data for barycentric evaluation. Color p0, p1, p2;
if(face.IsTriangle) { p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; } else { if( t3 == 0 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,1,2} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; } else if( t1 == 0 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,2,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; //t0 = t0; t1 = t2; t2 = t3; } else if( t2 == -1 ) { // point is on subtriangle {0,1,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.A]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; //t0 = t0; //t1 = t1; t2 = t3; } else { // point must be on remaining subtriangle {1,2,3} p0 = mesh.VertexColors[face.B]; p1 = mesh.VertexColors[face.C]; p2 = mesh.VertexColors[face.D]; t0 = t1; t1 = t2; t2 = t3; } }
/** double r = t0 * p0.FractionRed() + t1 * p1.FractionRed() + t2 * p2.FractionRed(); double g = t0 * p0.FractionGreen() + t1 * p1.FractionGreen() + t2 * p2.FractionGreen(); double b = t0 * p0.FractionBlue() + t1 * p1.FractionBlue() + t2 * p2.FractionBlue();
ON_Color color; color.SetFractionalRGB(r, g, b);
unsigned int abgr = (unsigned int)color; rc = (int) ABGR_to_ARGB(abgr); **/ var c0 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p0); var c1 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p1); var c2 = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(p2); float s0 = (float) t0; float s1 = (float) t1; float s2 = (float) t2;
float R = s0 * c0.R + s1 * c1.R + s2 * c2.R; float G = s0 * c0.G + s1 * c1.G + s2 * c2.G; float B = s0 * c0.B + s1 * c1.B + s2 * c2.B; color = new Rhino.Display.Color4f(R, G, B, 1); } } return color.AsSystemColor(); }
…
ay how many valid permutations exist.
But allow me to guesstimate a number for 20 components (no more, no less). Here are my starting assumptions:
Let's say the average input and output parameter count of any component is 2. So we have 20 components, each with 2 inputs and 2 outputs.
There are roughly 35 types of parameter, so the odds of connecting two parameters at random that have the same type are roughly 3%. However there are many conversions defined and often you want a parameter of type A to seed a parameter of type B. So let's say that 10% of random connections are in fact valid. (This assumption ignores the obvious fact that certain parameters (number, point, vector) are far more common than others, so the odds of connecting identical types are actually much higher than 3%)
Now even when data can be shared between two parameters, that doesn't mean that hooking them up will result in a valid operation (let's ignore for the time being that the far majority of combinations that are valid are also bullshit). So let's say that even when we manage to pick two parameters that can communicate, the odds of us ending up with a valid component combo are still only 1 in 2.
We will limit ourselves to only single connections between parameters. At no point will a single parameter seed more than one recipient and at no point will any parameter have more than one source. We do allow for parameters which do not share or receive data.
So let's start by creating the total number of permutations that are possible simply by positioning all 20 components from left to right. This is important because we're not allowed to make wires go from right to left. The left most component can be any one of 20. So we have 20 possible permutations for the first one. Then for each of those we have 19 options to fill the second-left-most slot. 20×19×18×17×...×3×2×1 = 20! ~2.5×1018.
We can now start drawing wires from the output of component #1 to the inputs of any of the other components. We can choose to share no outputs, output #1, output #2 or both with any of the downstream components (19 of them, with two inputs each). That's 2×(19×2) + (19×2)×(19×2-1) ~ 1500 possible connections we can make for the outputs of the first component. The second component is very similar, but it only has 18 possible targets and some of the inputs will already have been used. So now we have 2×(18×2-1) + (18×2-1)×(18×2-1) ~1300. If we very roughly (not to mention very incorrectly, but I'm too tired to do the math properly) extrapolate to the other 18 components where the number of possible connections decreases in a similar fashion thoughout, we end up with a total number of 1500×1300×1140×1007×891×789×697×...×83×51×24×1 which is roughly 6.5×1050. However note that only 10% of these wires connect compatible parameters and only 50% of those will connect compatible components. So the number of valid connections we can make is roughly 3×1049.
All we have to do now is multiply the total number of valid connection per permutation with the total number of possible permutations; 20! × 3×1049 which comes to 7×1067 or 72 unvigintillion as Wolfram|Alpha tells me.
Impressive as these numbers sound, remember that by far the most of these permutations result in utter nonsense. Nonsense that produces a result, but not a meaningful one.
EDIT: This computation is way off, see this response for an improved estimate.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia…
Added by David Rutten at 12:06pm on March 15, 2013
ting at multiple geometries in the same location. I simply sorted the list of values and used the Delete Consecutive component. This potentially rearranges the order of values but I don't think that matters in your case. I also threw in an Int component which actually seems to make a difference (try sidestepping it and you will see!).
2-I flattened the output of the mesh component before sending it to union. This ensures that the original mesh is booleaned once with all the components rather than individually with each of the 86 components.
Is this what the result should look like?
One suggestion for future postings: when referencing geometry in rhino, it often helps if you attach your rhino file as well so people don't have to guess where you are starting from.
If you have further questions, just ask ;-)
cbass…
edit 29/04/14 - Here is a new collection of more than 80 example files, organized by category:
KangarooExamples.zip
This zip is the most up to date collection of examples at the moment, and collects t
Introduction to Grasshopper Videos by David Rutten.
Wondering how to get started with Grasshopper? Look no further. Spend an some time with the creator of Grasshopper, David Rutten, to learn the