IF the platform is "unsuitable" (or there's others more suitable) then disproportional amount of effort is obviously required for the same sort of result (or "similar"). And well ... er ... if the design goal is solid modelling ... chances are that a surface modeller MAY classify as unsuitable (but may not depending on the case).
Given the opportunity: Personal data: strictly AEC sector, AECOSim/Microstation (25 years, main BIM/General CAD purpose app) + various vertical Bentley Systems AEC apps + Generative Components (~10 years, main Parametric app) + CATIA/NX (20 years, main MCAD app) + Quest3D (~10 years, main VR app) + ... + you name it.
UGLY news: I run a practice > this means that I'm used in evaluating/addressing problems having TEAMS in mind, budget, alternatives, deadlines, clients, study guarantees, claims, clauses ... > this means that I'm often very bad/off-topic if an one man show task requires some opinion/solution/workflow.
Anyway ...
... with regard your issue I'll provide an indicative approach after this w/e ... but chances are that would be carried over exclusively without native components.
best, Peter
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tructures)
Bad news: real-life AEC trusses are far and away from lines.
Ugly news: Rhino is NOT an AEC app by any means nor it would ever be. For AEC app I mean the known 3 (Allplan, Revit and my favorite: AECOSim) and/or proper MCAD apps (like CATIA/NX). In plain English : without exporting (meaning (a) bake in nested blocks + (b) export via STEP) proper structured data (assembly/component) this WIP case is absolutely useless.
why may you ask.
well ... trusses are made with numerous shop drawings like this, that's why:
more soon.
best, Peter…
Get plenty of RAM. Windows 32-bit can assign 2MB of Ram per process, so if you have lots of RAM, you can run Rhino+Grasshopper in memory all the way. I'd say get at least 4GB, and preferably 8GB. If you have a 64-bit machine, then it pays off to go even higher than that.
2) Get fast RAM. Memory access is the main bottleneck in many applications, so the faster the RAM the faster most apps will work.
3) Get a fast processor, rather than lots of slow processors. Only a few apps out there can truly use Multi-Threading (Rhino and Grasshopper cannot). These days, CPU manufacturers try and dress up multi-core CPUs as the next best thing. It is not. It is a lie. Until software can truly run on multiple cores there is no benefit to this. If rendering is a big part of your job, then it does pay off to have a multi-core machine though.
4) Get a good graphics card. I've always preferred NVidia over ATI, but there are many good ATI cards as well. You can go for a gaming card (they're cheaper), but note that these are optimised for drawing triangles. If you get a professional card, it will draw lines and curves much faster.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Robert McNeel & Associates…
ents instead of code ... it could yield a nightmare of components (and a myriad of parameters). For real-life designs I would never attempt to do this without code.
2. A certain experience with Kangaroo (or some min surf other thing since using K on these ... well may be the killing a mosquito with a bazooka thing). That said I'm a great admirer of Daniel's work. But on the other hand why not?
3. A "certain" experience with trusses/space frames.
4. A "certain" experience with instance definitions (that's not doable with GH components).
5. Years of experience with parametric feature driven MCAD apps - Image35 (NX/CATIA) for designing the real-life parts (that have NOTHING to do with "abstract" concepts).
In total I would say that a similar "app" with code (excluding the min surf/mesh thing) would require 6-10 full days of work (or even more).
BTW: https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/top...…
th a graphic editor (GH) hosted in a CAD app that has primitive assembly/component capabilities and/or feature driven ops (Rhino). Did I've mentioned that Rhino is a surface modeler? (meaning the obvious).
3. Imagine a "seed" collection of assemblies related with various membrane components made in SW. Say: geometry (prior solid ops) and parameters (the feature driven part of the equation, in most of cases managed with some RDBMS). You should port these to GH (a variety of ways exist for that) and create the bare minimum of "solids" in GH as instance definitions. There's 2 main reasons to do that: (a) effectively communicating back on an assemply/component schema (via STEP) and ... (b) achieving manageable collections when in GH. These are critical for clash detection (when outlining some topology in GH, therefore NEVER work just with "curves") and "variation" control of some sort (up to a point). Of course for high class designs (where the devil hides in the details) this is NOT the best imaginable solution ... you'll need CATIA for such an integrated (all in one) procedure. On the other hand many could (wrongly) argue that CATIA is expensive (rather naive argument if a company has a certain turnover).
4. So, in general I would strongly suggest to use instance definitions of items in some sort of "intermediate state" of detail (an 100% undoable task without code) structured in such a way (classic assembly/component MCAD mentality blah, blah) that SW could take benefit of a possible modified "base topology" and proceed by finishing variations of the given assembly (feature driven stuff as usual).
5. Then export (STEP 214) back portions of the assemblies (and parameters used) to R/GH if and when this is required (for instance for BIM disciplines ... but Rhino is not a BIM app, nor it would ever be).
6. If you are familiar with code matters ... start thinking the whole puzzle that way, if not my advise is to find someone to design such a "procedure" (say an "app") using solely code, but this is not a task for the inexperienced by any means.
best, Peter…
n splitting curves and then join them to create the region; but I'am looking for a more straightforward solutions. 3- I know some plugins like clipper could do this, but I'm looking for more flexible solutions.
4- I tried Brep[] CreatePlanarBreps(IEnumerable<Curve>) in ghpython, but it doesn't work.
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emble machines (and require custom Articles for specs, cost pre-estimation and the likes).
Putting yourself against that "forest" you should answer the question N1: you want to just use (the unsafe option) these or cross the Rubicon and collaborate in some way with the software vendors? (the safe option plus numerous benefits: knowing what's in the pipeline years ago, solving bugs in no time etc etc etc).
The question N2 is: do you get involved (or you want to) in "developing" all that the one way or the other? If yes using what "platform"? (so to speak).
The question N3 is: what are your estimations concerning the future in our trade? (count the tremendous acceleration of things as well plus the unavoidable AI factor (sooner or later)).
By answering these 3 ... you can easily answer the other questions of yours.
Bad news: future is past already.…