ents (e.g. only fabric between 2 radial cable). But if I try to simulate a completely whole structure like picture below + if I trying to model a material that has more degree subdivision + adding diagonals (as resistance to shear deformation which causes the creases like Daniel Pikels example of tablecloth drop), then I have huge problem to deal with my hardware.
(I am using Intel Xeon 4 cores, 2.93GHz with 4GB RAM and running in Win7 in 64 bit but with Rhino 32 bit.)
(Roof geometry can be completely asymmetrical, so let’s assuming that we can’t array the resulting geometries!)
There are some discussions about how to increase the processing power of grasshopper:
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/is-there-a-plan-to-suppor...
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/performance-of-grasshopper?
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/grasshopper-cpu-optimization
As I know that the GH is single threaded, we could over clocking the CPU + give lot of RAM.
I am curious if Kangaroo and other Apps are following the same performance-rule (single thread) like Rhino/ G.H? And what would be the key-feature to increase the power of Rhino/GH/Kangaroo in order to process the case I mentioned before (completely retractable roof)?
- Which level of CPU? Or constraint of CPU over clocking when necessary and capacity of RAM)
- How fine tuning my PC for best performance? (Parallel computing, c-flex…)
- is GPU a matter? (E.g. in Animation standard: Nvidia CUDA Quadro 4000+)
Or probably just a suggestion of workstation ;-)
Sorry I am not expertise of computer technical…
Thanks!…
w elements (e.g. only fabric between 2 radial cable). But if I try to simulate a completely whole structure like picture below + if I trying to model a material that has more degree subdivision + adding diagonals (as resistance to shear deformation which causes the creases like your example of tablecloth drop), then I have huge problem to deal with my hardware.
(I am using Intel Xeon 4 cores, 2.93GHz with 4GB RAM and running in Win7 in 64 bit but with Rhino 32 bit.)
(Roof geometry can be completely asymmetrical, so let’s assuming that we can’t array the resulting geometries!)
There are some discussions about how to increase the processing power of grasshopper:
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/is-there-a-plan-to-support-multicore-in-the-future
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/performance-of-grasshopper?
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/grasshopper-cpu-optimization
As I read that the GH is single threaded, we could over clocking the CPU + give lot of RAM.
I am curious if Kangaroo and other Apps are following the same performance-rule (single thread) like Rhino/ G.H? And what would be the key-feature to increase the power of Rhino/GH/Kangaroo in order to process the case I mentioned before (completely retractable roof)?
- Which level of CPU? Or constraint of CPU over clocking when necessary and capacity of RAM)
- How fine tuning my PC for best performance? (Parallel computing, c-flex…)
- is GPU a matter? (E.g. in Animation standard: Nvidia CUDA Quadro 4000+)
Or probably just a suggestion of workstation ;-)
Sorry I am not expertise of computer technical…
Thanks!
…
Added by Jon to Kangaroo at 3:31am on June 27, 2014
n fact) according a vast variety of "modes" PLUS the required clash detection (ALWAYS via trigonometry). In plain English: outline any collection of Breps and "apply" a truss that is topologically sound (planarization in case of quads etc is an added constrain). PLUS outline/solve what comes "next" after that truss (like the planar glazing "add-on" brackets of yours [ the ones that need redesign, he he], or some roofing/facade skin system [secondary supports, corrugated sheet metal, insulation, final cladding, dogs and cats])
2. Imaging doing this in real life (nothing to do with "abstract" formations of "lines" or "shapes" or whatever). This means primarily adopting a BIM umbrella: in plain English AECOSim, Revit or Allplan (I'm a Bentley man so I use AECOSim + Generative Components). This also means using "in-parallel" a top MCAD app for 1:1 details, FEA/FIM and the vast paraphernalia required for real-life studies destined for real-life projects (made with real-life money by real-life people). My choice: CATIA/Siemens NX.
3. What to send to Microstation (if not using Generative Components, that is) and/or CATIA? In what "state"? To do what exactly? For instance even if you could design this feature driven tensile membrane anchor custom node in Rhino (you can't) it could be 100% useless in CATIA:
4. Imaging masterminding ways to send them nested instance definitions of ... er ... a coordinate system (all what you need). In plain English: since is utterly pointless to send them nested blocks that can't been parametrically controlled (variations/modifications/PLM management/BOM/specs etc etc)... send them simply the "instructions" to place coordinate systems of components that ARE parametrically designed within Microstation and/or CATIA (classic feature driven design approach blah blah). So GH solves topology et all (working on data imported via, say, Excel sheets related with sizes of components etc etc) and sends to Microstation simply this (a myriad of "this" actually):
I do hope that the gist of the "method" (the ONLY way to invite GH to the party) is clear.
best, Peter…
tly light vehicles such as bicycles and variations thereof. Although frame design is mostly of a structural nature, there are a number of elements that interact mechanically. Also, as you may be aware, bicycle and high grade tubing is not of constant section so shelling method in FEA is out of the question, but even so, because the joint needs to be modeled very accurately, that means different geometry and properties for welded area, heat affected area and base material; like so a simpler FEA package may not suffice.
I don't know karamba extensively, rather superficially, actually, but I'm under the impression it mostly deals with beam analysis. Pls correct me if I am under the wrong impression. I must say it would be very nice to have a complete FEA package inside GH really!!
Typical workflow for me would be to model everything in Solidworks, and then export to Ansys Mechanical. Although Ansys needs to read every input and naturally remesh back again, integration within Solidworks, Catia, Inventor, Creo, Solidthinking... and the sort, works reasonably well.
Now, I don't remember Ansys having a Rhinoceros plugin so that you could bridge the 2 together, but maybe I should go check again.
3) Great work with that fractal tree. It's nice to know it is a possibility at least. I have tried Apophysis and others, but to my knowledge there's not an application that could deliver 3D fractal designs in a way that you could further manipulate with conventional modelling techniques, maybe apply textures and render, or export to CAM, 3D printing... etc.
P.S.: I have tried all the apps mentioned above and then some more. All of them have serious limitations when it comes to parametric design. For complex models they crash plenty upon rebuilding... a number of time consuming errors appear, and general work flow isn't very efficient for purely parametric work. Speaking for myself, I'd rather spend the time on a definition that enables me to have full control and then generate a new result within seconds, than model everything very quickly and then taking a long time with each new result.
(Thanks for the replies and sorry for the long text, you asked to elaborate).…
ll geometry.
The difference with programs like Inventor is that they are made for production, regardless of the fabrication method. I won't go into detail about that, and instead focus on the modeling process.
In this little model, the starting point actually is a bit obvious, the foundation.
The only contents in the 3dm file are 27 lines. These indicate the location of each footing, and the direction of the tilt of each column. Everything else is defined in GH with the use of numbers as input parameters.
Needless to say, instead of those lines you could obviously generate lines and control the number of columns and panels, hence establish their layout, with any algorithmic or non-algorithmic criteria you please. That marks a major difference between GH and Inventor.
You can generate geometry with Inventor via scripting/customization (beyond iLogic), with transient graphics for visual feedback similar to GH's red-default previews. However Inventor's modeling functions are not set to input and output data trees. I won't go into detail on that, but suffice to say that the data tree associativity of GH was for me the first major difference I noticed. I've used other apps with node diagram interfaces like digital fusion for non-linear video editing since the late 90's, so the canvas did not call my attention when I first started using GH.
Anyways, here's a screen capture of the foundational lines:
In the first group of components, the centerlines of the rear columns are modeled:
And the locations in elevation for connection points are set. Those elevations were just numbers I copied from Excel, but you can obviously control that any way you please. I was just trying to model this quickly.
The same was done for the rear columns:
The above, believe it or not, took me the first 5 hours to get.
Here's a screen capture of what the model and definition looked like after 4 hours, not much:
If you're interested, next post I can get into the sketching part you mentioned, which is a bit cumbersome with GH, but not really.
I wouldn't say that using GH to do this little model was cumbersome, it just needed some thinking at the beginning. You do similar initial thinking when working with a feature-based modeler.…
Added by Santiago Diaz at 12:44am on February 24, 2011
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
as the design table? I think this could be 'drawn' and constrained in Inventor in a lot less time. I know the GH model would have a lot of flexibility, but in this case, what can you do with it that wasn't provided by an Inventor model?
Only the 27 lines mentioned were modeled in Rhino, the rest is modeled with GH.
The 5 hrs involved thinking about the approach, defining vertical lines, tilts, elevations, pitch of the roof, intersections.
Once I had decided what my approach would be, and tested the logic with those first lines, points and data path arrangements, it only took one more hour to get to this:
Which is actually quite fast, compared to MCAD workflows.
If you already have components (columns, beams, etc.) modeled and ready to drop into a project, of course it is lightning fast to model simple projects like this example.
I am not as much interested in those situations, because improving efficiency is straightforward and obvious.
I'm more interested in situations where there are no pre-defined families of objects, in which case you need to start from scratch.
The GH model I'm showing is modeled from scratch, except for the 27 lines in Rhino.
Here's one obvious advantage to modeling with GH, once the definition is set-up, it's virtually effortless to change inputs and alter the overall design. Here's an example, lets say we wanted to extend the roof 3 more units, curling away from the original direction.
Plan view before:
And after:
An MCAD app will also allow you to do this, as long as the location of additional elements follows the existing geometric method of definition. What happens if you want completely change the way you locate columns, roof slope, intersection points?
In MCAD, you'll need to re-model the underlying geometry, which will take the same effort as the first round. In GH, this process is not only much faster, it's open to algorithmic approaches, galapagos, etc. and it just takes some simple re-wiring to have all down-stream elements associate themselves to this new geoemtric definition.
For instance, here's the same definition applied to two curves, which are divided in GH, the resulting points are used as a starting point for lines directed at normal from curves.
This is not so easy to do in MCAD.…
Added by Santiago Diaz at 7:55pm on February 24, 2011
t. So here we go!
1. Honeybee is brown and not yellow [stupid!]...
As you probably remember Honeybee logo was initially yellow because of my ignorance about Honeybees. With the help of our Honeybee expert, Michalina, now the color is corrected. I promised her to update everyone about this. Below are photos of her working on the honeybee logo and the results of her study.
If you think I'm exaggerating by calling her a honeybee expert you better watch this video:
Thank you Michalina for the great work! :). I corrected the colors. No yellow anymore. The only yellow arrows represent sun rays and not the honeybee!
2. Yellow or brown, W[here]TH Honeybee is?
I know. It has been a long time after I posted the initial video and it is not fun at all to wait for a long time. Here is the good news. If you are following the Facebook page you probably now that the Daylighting components are almost ready.
Couple of friends from Grasshopper community and RADIANCE community has been helping me with testing/debugging the components. I still think/hope to release the daylighting components at some point in January before Ladybug gets one year old.
There have been multiple changes. I finally feel that the current version of Honeybee is simple enough for non-expert users to start running initial studies and flexible enough for advanced users to run advanced studies. I will post a video soon and walk you through different components.
I think I still need more time to modify the energy simulation components so they are not going to be part of the next release. Unfortunately, there are so many ways to set up and run a wrong energy simulation and I really don’t want to add one new GIGO app to the world of simulation. We already have enough of that. Moreover I’m still not quite happy with the workflow. Please bear with me for few more months and then we can all celebrate!
I recently tested the idea of connecting Grasshopper to OpenStudio by using OpenStudio API successfully. If nothing else, I really want to release the EnergyPlus components so I can concentrate on Grasshopper > OpenStudio development which I personally think is the best approach.
3. What about wind analysis?
I have been asked multiple times that if Ladybug will have a component for wind study. The short answer is YES! I have been working with EFRI-PULSE project during the last year to develop a free and open source web-based CFD simulation platform for outdoor analysis.
We had a very good progress so far and our rockstar Stefan recently presented the results of the work at the American Physical Society’s 66th annual DFD meeting and the results looks pretty convincing in comparison to measured data. Here is an image from the presentation. All the credits go to Stefan Gracik and EFRI-PULSE project.
The project will go live at some point next year and after that I will release the Butterfly which will let you prepare the model for the CFD simulation and send it to EFRI-PULSE project. I haven’t tried to run the simulations locally yet but I’m considering that as a further development. Here is how the component and the logo looks like right now.
4. Teaching resources
It has been almost 11 months from the first public release of Ladybug. I know that I didn't do a good job in providing enough tutorials/teaching materials and I know that I won’t be able to put something comprehensive together soon.
Fortunately, ladybug has been flying in multiple schools during the last year. Several design, engineering and consultant firms are using it and it has been thought in several workshops. As I checked with multiple of you, almost everyone told me that they will be happy to share their teaching materials; hence I started the teaching resources page. Please share your materials on the page. They can be in any format and any language. Thanks in advance!
I hope you enjoyed/are enjoying/will enjoy the longest night of the year. Happy Yalda!
Cheers,
-Mostapha
…
e chosen to dive into Grasshopper. I’m about 6 months in. If some of my comments are completely off, please take that to mean that a feature is too inaccessible to a newish user rather that it’s just missing, as I may have stated.
One of my primary pain points is this. Things that can be done in other programs are invariably easier in other programs. This is a big enough issue that I doubt there’s an easy solution that an armchair qb like myself can offer up.
The interface:
I’ve used a lot of 3D programs. I’ve never encountered one as difficult as grasshopper. What in other programs is a dialog box, is 8 or 10 components strung together in grasshopper. The wisdom for this I often hear among the grasshopper community is that this allows for parametric design. Yet PTC (Parametric Technology Corp.) has been doing parametric design software since 1985 and has a far cleaner and more intuitive interface. So does SolidWorks, Inventor, CATIA, NX, and a bunch of others.
In the early 2000's, when parametric design software was all the rage, McNeel stated quite strongly the Rhino would remain a direct modeler and would not become a parametric modeler. Trends come. Trends go. And the industry has been swinging back to direct modeling. So McNeel’s decision was probably ok. But I have to wonder if part of McNeel’s reluctance to incorporate some of the tried and proven ideas of other parametric packages doesn't have roots in their earlier declaration to not incorporate parametrics.
A Visual Programming Language:
I read a lot about the awesomeness and flexibility of Grasshopper being a visual programming language. Let’s be clear, this is DOS era speak. I believe GH should continue to have the ability to be extended and massaged with code, as most design programs do. But as long as this is front and center, GH will remain out of reach to the average designer.
Context sensitivity:
There is no reason a program in 2014 should allow me to make decisions that will not work. For example, if a component input is in all cases incompatible with another component's output, I shouldn't be able to connect them.
Sliders:
I hate sliders. I understand them, but I hate ‘em. I think they should be optional. Ya, I know I can r-click on the N of a component and set the integer. It’s a pain, and it gives no feedback. The “N” should turn into the number if set. AAAnd, sliders should be context sensitive. I like that the name of a slider changes when I plug it into something. But if I plug it into something that'll only accept a 1, a 2, or a 3, that slider should self set accordingly. I shouldn't be able to plug in a “50” and have everything after turn red.
Components:
Give components a little “+” or a drawer on the bottom or something that by clicking, opens the component into something akin to a dialog box. This should give access to all of the variables in the component. I shouldn't have to r-click on each thing on a component to do all of the settings.
And this item I’m guessing on. I’m not yet good enough at GH to know if this may have adverse effects. Reverse, Flatten, Graft, etc.; could these be context sensitive? Could some of these items disappear if they are contextually inappropriate or gray out if they're unlikely?
Tighter integration with Rhino:
I'm not entirely certain what this would look like. Currently my work flow entails baking, making a few Rhino edits, and reinserting into GH. I question the whole baking thing, btw. Why isn't it just live geometry? That’s how other parametric apps work. Maybe add more Rhino functionality to GH. GH has no 3D offset. I have to bake, offsetserf, and reinsert the geometry. I’m currently looking at the “Geometry Cache” and “Geometry Pipeline” components to see if they help. But I haven't been able to figure it out. Which leads me to:
Update all of the documentation:
I'm guessing this is an in process thing and you're working toward rolling GH from 0.9.00075 to 1.0. GH was being updated nearly weekly earlier this year. Then it suddenly stopped. If we're talking weeks before a full release, so be it. But if we're looking at something longer, a documentation update would help a lot. Geometry Cache and Geometry Pipeline’s help still read “This is the autogenerated help topic for this object. Developers: override the HtmlHelp_Source() function in the base class to provide custom help.” This does not help. And the Grasshopper Primer 2nd Ed. was written for GH 0.60007.
Grasshopper is fundamentally a 2D program:
I know you'll disagree completely, but I'm sticking to this. How else could an omission like offsetsurf happen? Pretty much every 3D program in existence has this. I’m sure I can probably figure out how to deconstruct the breps, join the curves, loft, trim, and so forth. But does writing an algorithm to do what all other 3D programs do with a dialog box seem reasonable? I'm sure if you go command by command you'll find a ton on such things.
If you look at the vast majority of things done in GH, you'll note that they're mostly either flat or a fundamentally 2D pattern on a warped surface.
I've been working on a part that is a 3D voronoi trimmed to a 3D model. I've been trying to turn the trimmed voronoi into legitimate geometry for over a month without success.
http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/question-voronoi-3d-continued
I’ve researched it enough to have found many others have had the exact same problem and have not solved it. It’s really not that conceptually difficult. But GH lacks the tools.
Make screen organization easier:
I have a touch of OCD, and I like my GH layout to flow neatly. Allow input/output nodes to be re-ordered. This will allow a reduction in crossed wires. Make the wire positions a bit more editable. I sometimes use a geometry component as a wire anchor to clean things up. Being able to grab a wire and pull it out of the way would be kinda nice.
I think GH has some awesome abilities. I also think accessing those abilities could be significantly easier.
~p…