to incorporating math and geometry in computational design education, Paneling Tools
Marlo Ransdell, PhD Creative Director, at FSU , Digital Fabrication in Design Research and Education
Andy Payne, LIFT architects | Harvard GSD | FireFly
Jay H Song, Chair, Jewelry School of Design, Jewelry as Personal Expression, Extra+Ordinary@Jewelry.com
Pei- Jung (P.J.) Chen, Professor of Jewelry, SCAD
Gustavo Fontana, designer/co-founder nimbistand, Diseñar, desarrollar y comercializar productos por tu cuenta.
Joe Anand, CEO MecSoft Corporation, RhinoCAM
Julian Ossa, Chair, Industrial Design Director, Diseño – Una opción de vida a todo vapor!, UPB
Minche Mena, SHINE Architecture, Principal
J. Alstan Jakubiec, Daylighting and Environmental Performance in Architectural Design Solemma, LLC
Carlos Garnier R&D Director / Jaime Cadena – General Director, Plug Design, www.plugdesign.com.mx
Mario Nakov, www.chaosgroup.com [ V-Ray ]
Andres Gonzalez, RhinoFabStudio
Workshops:
o) Paneling Tools
o) RhinoCAM
o) Rhinology in Design, for Jewelry
o) Footwear
o) V-Ray: Jewelry Design
o) V-Ray: Architects and Industrial Designers
o) FireFly
o) J. Alstan Jakubiec, DIVA
The cost for each workshop or the Lectures is 95.0 US$
To register:
WORK-SHOPS April 2 - RHINO DAY
WORK-SHOPS April 3 - RHINO DAY
REGISTRATION RHINO DAY
NOTE: All students and faculty members that register to this event, will receive a Rhino 5 Educational License at the event.
…
you may know, PCS (from now I will call polar coordinate system with PCS, and cartesian one with CCS) describes point position with 2 values (like x and y in CCS) which are r and theta(r,theta). r is for distance from PCS center, theta is angular dimension which is in 0 to 360 or 0 to 2*pi domain.
To hark back to David's guide line - here it is replaced with guide circle.
Why to sort points like this ? As usual, one image tells more...
Here is logic behind all this stuff :
Find an average point of all given points*
Search for furthest point from an average point*
Create a circle with center at average point and radius = distance from average point to furthest point*
*Steps 1-3 can be replaced with custom hand-made circle, I decided to automate it that way.
For each point find closest point on circle - this will be used for finding theta value
For each point find distance to average point - this is r value
To overcome problem with same theta (t) values (like same x values in CCS), instead of multiplying by 1000, we will use a new create set component. This component creates set of integers, each one representing one unique input value. So if points A, B, C, D, E are (r,theta) :
A (1, 30)
B (2, 30)
C (3, 30)
D (1, 45)
E (1, 60)
Then create set will output list of integers = 0,0,0,1,2 (same theta for A, B, C other theta for D and E). Now its getting really easy - remap r values to domain 0 to 0.5 (or any less then 1), and add integers from create set component to remapped r values.
7. So what we have now is list of floating point numbers : A=0, B=0.25, C=0.5, D=1, E=2
Profit of remapping is that r values will never affect integers representing theta values - and all the information is stored in one floating point number ! By sorting these values we will obtain proper order of points - to complete this, we need to sort points parallel with values.
What's really cool about polar sorting - there could be any amount of points, but polyline connecting all of them will never self-intersect. Probably there is some relation with 2d convex hull.…
east make all our algorithms thread-safe, so they can all be called from multiple threads, this is the first step towards multi-threading.
But multi-threading is not just something you switch on or off, it's an approach. Let's take the meshing of Breps for example. Let's assume that at some point one or more breps are added to the document. The wireframes of these breps can be drawn immediately, but the shading meshes need to be calculated first. How do we go about doing this? Allow me to enumerate some obvious solutions:
We put everything on hold and compute all meshes, one at a time. Then, when we're done we'll yield control back to the Rhino window so that key presses and mouse events can once again be processed. This is the simplest of all solutions and also the worst from the users point of view.
We allow the views to be redrawn, mouse events and key presses to be handled, but we perform the meshing in a background thread. I.e. whatever processor cycles are left over from regular use are now put to work on computing meshes. Once we're done computing these meshes we can start drawing the shaded breps. This is a lot better as it doesn't block the UI, but it also means that for a while (potentially a very long time) our breps will not be shaded in the viewport. This approach is already a lot harder from a programming perspective because you now have multiple threads all with access to the same Breps in memory and you need to make sure that they don't start to perform conflicting operations. Rhino already does this (and has been doing for a long time) on a lot of commands, otherwise you wouldn't be able to abort meshing/intersections/booleans etc. with an Escape press.
So we can compute the meshes on the UI-thread or on a background thread. How about using our multiple cores to speed up the process? Again, there are several ways in which this can be achieved:
Say we have a quad-core machine, i.e. four processors at our disposal. We could choose to assign the meshing of the first brep to the first processor, the second brep to the second processor, the third brep to the third processor and so on. Once a processor is done with the meshing of a specific brep, we'll give it the next brep to mesh until we're done meshing all the breps. This is a good solution when multiple breps need to be meshed at once, but it doesn't help at all if we only need to compute the mesh for a single brep, which is of course a very common case in Rhino.
To go a level deeper, we need to start adding multi-threading to the mesher itself. Let's say that the mesher is set up in such a way that it will assign each face of the brep to a new core, then -once all faces have been meshed- it will stitch together the partial meshes into a single large mesh. Now we've sped up the meshing of breps with multiple faces, but not individual surfaces.
We can of course go deeper still. Perhaps there is some operation that is repeated over and over during the meshing of a single face. We could also choose to multi-thread this operation, thus speeding up the meshing of all surfaces and breps.
All of the above approaches are possible, some are very difficult, some are actually not possible if we're not allowed to break the SDK. A further problem is that there's overhead involved with multi-threading. Very few operations will actually become 4 times faster if you distribute the work across 4 cores. Often one core will simply take longer than the other 3, often the partial results need to be aggregated which takes additional cycles and/or memory. What this means is that if you were to apply all of the above methods (multi-thread the meshing of individual faces, multi-thread the meshing of breps with multiple faces and multi-thread the meshing of multiple breps) you're probably worse off than you were before.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia
* an example would be the z-sorting of objects in viewport prior to repainting, which is a step performed on every redraw as far as I know.…
- nickname is rather the best approach - and not on active group, but that's irrelevant anyway).
Step back (assuming that you are talking about the "Tens_from_random_blah_blah" definition):
1. Engineering is the art of demystifying (or we are promising that anyway, he he). This means that you start defining (better: outlining) some topology for things based on some "generic" rules (like the ones applied for the masts,cables,cones etc etc). These things are kept in some kind of structure (Lists, DataTrees etc). Things are few in 99.99999% of cases (i.e. : even the biggest membrane "module" has, say, 20-50 masts per "module").
2. Then ... handling things "individually" (mostly modifying) becomes the most critical part. See this (an x "possible" solution by combining a myriad of "options" : a no cones membrane solution, in plain English):
3. But the above is impossible (for more than obvious reasons). You should deploy masts in some high/low sequence in order to achieve some meaningful convex/concave formation that could work.
4. This "works" : 5. This doesn't:
6. This works partially (the formation at the back is "flat" == undo able):
7. This is utterly kitsch (and faulty as the case6 - the back portion):
So it's quite obvious that without a (quite complex) capability to individually control things (in this occasion : mast heights) the whole definition is a waste of computer time. Additionally the more the solution is "demystified" (some curve is defined, some random points are created, some masts are in place, some cables appear etc etc) the more additional constrains are required in order to "narrow" the possibilities (In plain English : sliders should control other sliders as regards their min/max values, true/false, you/me etc etc).
Remember that we are talking about ONE (mast height) out of a myriad things that you should control "manually" (it's utterly pointless to mastermind some kind of "generic" rules - or use naive attractors etc etc) .You'll see the difference when I'll completely reform the definition by adding individual control upon anything.
PS: what about the blocks? (the real life stuff that actually make any solution possible). Can you imagine a 2nd set of "restrictions" imposed by "a child to his parent"? (Assembly/Component modeling , that is).
more soon
…
the results myself and I am open to changing the name/description of the input based on what you have found here. modulateFlowOrTemp is not the best name for what seems to be going on and we should change it to reflect more what is happening in the IDF.
Here is how I am understanding the results of the different cases:
1) When the variable flow option is selected (and the outdoor air set to "None"), the heating and cooling of the space seems to happen only through re-circulation of the indoor air. My comparison to a VAV system was not appropriate and perhaps it would be better to compare it to a window air conditioner or a warm air furnace, which, as far as I understand, only re-circulate indoor air and do not bring in outside air.
2) My reasoning for the name modulateFlowOrTemp came mostly from my realization that the supply air temperature remained within the defined limits when the variable flow option is selected (and the outdoor air set to "None"). When the outdoor air was set to Maximum or Sum, the supply air temperature went way out of the temperature limits that I initially set. I realize now that the flows are varying in both cases and the name of the input really must change.
3) I think that the reason why we don't see any effect from the air side economizer is because the heating/cooling energy results that you get from an ideal air system are just the sum of the sensible and the latent heat added/removed from the zone by the system. This value of heat added or removed from the zone does not change whether the added/removed heat comes from outside air or from a cooling/heating coil. Since there is no cooling coil or boiler or chiller in an ideal air system, there is no way to request an output of the energy added/removed by such a coil or chiller as opposed to that removed/added by outside air. In other words, the air side economizer option on the ideal air system is practically useless because it does not help us differentiate the cooling that comes from the outside air vs. that which comes from a coil. All that it does is change the outdoor air fraction while keeping the reported cooling/heating values the same.
Please let me know if you think that this explanation makes sense, Burin and, in light of all this, I am very interested in your suggestions.
From my own perspective, I am now convinced that the default should definitely have the outside air requirements set to "None" since, otherwise, we cannot distinguish cooling/heating that happens from addition of outside air and that which must be supplied by a coil. At least when we get rid of the outside air requirement, we can be sure that the ideal air system values are only showing heating/cooling from a coil or HVAC system.
I have decided to remove the airsideEconomizer input since it seems to give misleading expectations. I am going to recommend here on out that, if you want to estimate the effect of increasing outside air on cooling, you should use the "Set EP Airflow" component, use fan-driven natural ventilation, and you should connect a custom CSV schedule of airflow. You will have to create such a schedule with native GH components using the outside air temperature, your zone setpoints, and the times that you are cooling in your initial run of E+. Either you do this or you set up a full-blown system with OpenStudio.
I have also decided to get rid of the heatRecovery input since it seems like this will also produce misleading expectations by the same logic.
Lastly, I am going to change the name of the modulateFlowOrTemp_ input to outdoorAirReq_. The default will be to have no indoor air requirement as stated above but you can input either "maximum" or "sum" to have the IDF run accordingly.
Let me know if this sounds good or if you have suggestions. Updated GH file attached. The github has the new Ideal Air Loads component. Make sure that you have sync correctly and restart GH after updating your components.
-Chris…
e current data should be turned to be original data, is that right?there are 3 cases.
what do this components effect the performance after if i turn the component to be flatten and graft and to connect to other component?
{, is that0}
{0;0}
{0;0;0}
{0;0;0;0}
{0;0;0;0;0}
{0;0;0;0;0;0}…
with this machine.
As Jason says, Rhino and Grasshopper are mainly single-threaded, so I prioritized single core speed and got an i7 4790k, which comfortably overclocks to 4.7GHz (with a decent air cooler, but no fancy liquid cooling).
The Kangaroo2 solver is actually multi-threaded now, but the difference this makes is not great as you might imagine. Using 4 cores is certainly nowhere near 4 times faster, because although parts of the calculation are easily parallelized, everything still needs to be recombined at each iteration, and this is usually the bottleneck. I think there is still room for some improvement in how it is multi-threaded, but I wouldn't hold your breath for any massive changes on this front soon.
I'd be interested to know how the performance scales with the Xeon chips (more cores, significantly more expensive, but relatively low clock speeds). At the time I made the guess that they weren't worth it, but it would be good to really test this out.
RAM is relatively cheap these days, so I went with 32GB of it at 2133MHz. It does seem that the speed of the RAM matters, as enabling XMP in the BIOS (to make it run above the default 1333) seemed to make a noticeable difference.
Graphics-wise my personal feeling is that the gaming oriented GTX cards offer better value than the much more expensive 'professional' Quadro range - and have read that the hardware between the 2 has historically been very similar or even identical despite the Quadros being several times the price, with the difference being mainly in the drivers. There are some threads on discourse.mcneel.com about this, and it seems that recent GTX cards like the 970 do very well in Holomark (the Rhino performance benchmarking tool).
I got a GTX 770 (this was just before the 900 series came out), which is probably way overkill just for Rhino/Grasshopper, as they don't use the GPU for more than display (Though some of the render plugins do, and I think for those more CUDA cores is what matters, so there GTX is probably still better value.)
Probably swapping this for a much cheaper card wouldn't make much difference to Rhino/GH performance anyway (though if you want to use the PC for other stuff like gaming or virtual reality it does).
I don't have much experience with AMD cards, so can't comment on how they compare to Nvidia.
Eventually I do hope to make Kangaroo run the physics on the GPU, and potentially this does have a big speed impact. Nvidia recently released some impressive demos of their FLEX engine, which really fly with a decent graphics card. That is very much game-physics, and not suitable for most of the things Kangaroo is used for, but theoretically Kangaroo could also be adapted to use CUDA (or OpenCL), though it involves a lot of big changes, and I don't have a timeline for this yet.
In the much shorter term there are some things in the pipeline that should speed up Kangaroo for certain things like collisions between large numbers of objects, just by using some different algorithms.
Altogether my machine was still well under €2K, and I've been really happy with it. That said, the difference in performance between this and my 4 year old €700 i5 laptop is actually not that huge in day-to-day Grasshopper usage. It does seem that there is a strong case of diminishing returns with buying a PC - I'd hazard a guess that even spending 3 times this amount (as another thread on this forum was discussing recently) you'd be hard pushed to get anything that made a really significant difference to the experience of using it, and if you really want to spend more money, you would be better off just upgrading more frequently (and getting a nice monitor(s)).
Anyway, a long ramble, I hope some of it is useful. As I said, I'm no hardware expert, and would be interested to hear different opinions.
I also think it will be nice to make a simple benchmarking tool for Kangaroo and have people run it on their various machines and report back results (as with Holomark), to help others make informed decisions on these things. I'll try and put something together for this soon.
…
onents (radiation, sunlight-hours and view analysis) which let you study the effect of the orientation of your building and the analysis result. When you come to a question similar to "what is the orientation that the building receives the most/least amount of radiation?" is probably the right time to use this component.
HOW?
I'll try to explain the steps using a simple example. Here is my design geometries. The building in the center is the building to be designed and the rest of the buildings are context. I want to see the effect of orientation on the amount of the radiation on the test building surfaces from the start of Oct. to the end of Feb. for Chicago.
First I need to set up the normal radiation analysis and run it for the building as it is right now. [I'm not going to explain how you can set up this since you can find it in the sample file (Download the sample file from here)]
Now I need to set up the parameters for orientation study using orientationStudyPar component. You can find it under the Extra tab:
At minimum I need to input the divisionAngle, and the totalAngle and set runTheStudy to True. In this case I put 45 for divisionAngle and 180 for the totalAngle which means I want the study to be run for angles 0, 45, 90, 135 and 180.
[Note1: The divisionAngle should be divisible by totalAngle.]
[Note 2: If you don't provide any point for the basePoint, the component will use the center of the geometry as the center of the rotation.]
[Note 3: You can also rotate the context with the geometry! Normally you don't have the chance to change the context to make your design work but if you got lucky the rotateContext input is for you! Set it to True. The default is set to False.]
You're all set for the orientation study, just connect the orientationStudyPar output to OrientationStudyP input in the component and wait for the result!
The component will run the study for all the orientations and preview the latest geometry. To see the result just grab a quick graph and connect it to totalRadiation. As you can see in the graph 135 is the orientation that I receive the maximum radiation. Dang!
If you want to see all the result geometries set bakeIt to True, and the result will be baked under LadyBug> RadaitionStudy>[projectname]> . The layer name starts with a number which is the totalRadiation.
Mostapha…
ly this is a Rhino.Python problem and not a Grasshopper issue, but it could apply to both!
I was trying to take a simple example of moving a ball around and see how it could be animated through Rhino.Python. The code works great in wire frame with now memory issues at all. However, when I switch the view to Shaded or Rendered, things go south pretty quickly. The RAM usage of Rhino which was steady around 350mb (ish) now grows every frame after a minute or so, it is in the GB's and never drops even after the script has stopped.What gives? Clearly this must be possible because Bongo does something similar when it does animations. Check out my code below and I would love to hear your thoughts.
import time
import rhinoscriptsyntax as rs
import Rhino
height = 100
width = 100
x = 0
y = 0
xspeed = .1
yspeed = .3
start_time = time.time()
end_time = 60
run_time = 0
sphere = rs.AddSphere((x,y,0), 5)
while run_time < end_time:
x = x + xspeed
y = y + yspeed
if x > width/2 or x < -width/2:
xspeed = xspeed * -1
if y > height/2 or y < -height/2:
yspeed = yspeed * -1
rs.MoveObject(sphere, (xspeed, yspeed, 0))
Rhino.RhinoApp.Wait()
run_time = time.time() - start_time…
uick answers. Below you will find some suggestions, but don't think of them as rules and especially don't think of them as guarantees.
1. Choose a descriptive title for your post
Don't call your question "Help!" or "I have a problem" or "Deadline tonight!", but actually describe the problem you are having.
2. Be succinct but clear in your wording
People need to know some details about your problem in order to understand what sort of answers would satisfy you, but nobody cares about how angry your boss or how bad your teacher or how tight your deadline is. Talk about the problem and only the problem. If you don't speak English well, you should probably post in your native language as well as providing a Google Translation of your question.
3. Attach minimal versions of all the relevant files
If you have a GH/GHX file you have a question about, attach it to the post. Don't expect that people will recreate a file based on a screen-shot because that's a lot of pointless work. It's also a good idea to remove everything non-essential from a GH file. You can use the 'Internalise Data' menu option to cut everything to the left of a parameter:
If you're importing curves or Breps or meshes from Rhino, you can also internalise them so you won't have to post a 3DM file as well as a GH file. If you do attach large files, consider zipping them first. Do not use RAR, Ning doesn't handle it.
It is especially a good idea to post files that don't require any non-standard components if at all possible. Not everyone has Kangaroo or Hoopsnake or Geco installed so if your file relies on those components, it might not open correctly elsewhere.
4. Include a detailed image of the GH file if it makes sense
If your question is about a specific (group of) components, consider adding a screenshot of the file in the text of the post. You can use the Ctrl+Shift+Q feature in Grasshopper to quickly create nice screenshots with focus rectangles such as this:
5. Include links to online resources if possible
If you have a question about Schwarz Minimal surfaces, please link to a website which talks about these.
6. Create new topics rather than continuing old ones
It's usually better to start a fresh question, even if there's already a discussion that kinda sorta tangentially touches upon the same issue. Please link to that discussion, but start anew.
7. This is not a 'do my work for me' group
Many of us like to help, but it's good to see effort on our part being matched by effort on your part. Questions in the form of 'I need to do X but cannot be bothered to try and learn the software' will (and should) go unanswered.
7b. Similarly, questions in the form of 'How do I quickly recreate this facade that took a team of skilled professionals four months to figure out?' have a very low success rate.
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David Rutten
Lead Grasshopper Development
Robert McNeel & Associates…
Added by David Rutten at 12:58pm on October 1, 2013