when you get external events that occur on a different thread, as might well be the case for hardware controls or sensor data.
Here's essentially what happens:
Something expires (part of) a Grasshopper document, and the NewSolution() method is called upon to rectify this. It starts by iterating over all the objects inside the document and whenever it encounters an object which has the 'expired' flag set to true, it will tell it to recompute itself. This object cannot recompute itself unless all the objects it depends on are also 'solved', so it might cause a shock-wave of recomputes across the entire document. Eventually though all the inputs are available and it recomputes itself and then hands control back to the document solver.
The document solver now continues on its quest to find more 'expired' objects. It might find some in which case the above story is repeated, or maybe there was only ever one expired object, or maybe the object we just found caused all other expires objects to solve themselves, leaving nothing to do for the document solver.
When the document solver has iterated over all the objects and determined that none of them are still 'expired', it will place a call to redraw the Grasshopper canvas and the Rhino viewports.
That is what happens during a proper, single-threaded solution. When there's two (or more) threads operating on the same document, all hell breaks loose:
Let's assume the document solver is halfway done with its job of resolving all expired objects. At this point an external event comes in on a different thread, which is handled immediately by some component. This component places a call to ExpireSolution(True), which sets the 'expired' flags of a bunch of components. Some of these components will already have been handled by the solver in the first thread, so even though the solver thinks all is fine and dandy, these components have in fact expired again. Other components might still be expired because the solver hasn't gotten to them yet. Worst case scenario, a component just finished solving itself on the first thread and the data inside of it is being harvested by a downstream component. While it's collecting this data the second thread wipes the data, causing a mismatch and probably a crash.
The Grasshopper core algorithms are not thread-safe and if you start calling methods from different threads, you will run into clashes.
What you need to do is 'invoke' the first thread from your second thread. That way the first thread is allowed to finish what it's doing before getting around to your request. Invoking is a very important concept when you're writing a multi-threaded app with a GUI and there's plenty of online resources explaining how it works. Here's two:
http://weblogs.asp.net/justin_rogers/pages/126345.aspx
http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/threads/winforms.shtml
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia…
Added by David Rutten at 4:04am on February 25, 2011
thing that MicroStation does (or doesn't). The eternal debate between us is that they focus to the so called BIM aspect of things (and obviously on interoperability matters - that said IFC2*4 is" implemented" in certain Bentley verticals like BA and others) whilst I'm after assembly/component puzzles (and on that matter ... MS ...hmm... to put it politely is not exactly CATIA and/or NX, he he).
On the other hand this paranoid obsession with Level/Layer driven CAD (I hate it) defines a red thick line between CAD and MCAD - because the most intelligent importer can't emulate the way that Siemens NX/CATIA classifies objects - and without control power means nothing.
On the other hand Microstation V9 (...soon) has interesting scripting capabilities (think Modo rather Generative Components) ... meaning that Grasshopper could work there in a rather nice way. I think that I must talk for that to Ray (he recently ditched the ancient legacy MS render engine in favor for the Luxology/Nexus engine). Ray still is negative to buy Act3D mind (hope that you know the mother of visual scripting - the Quest3D VR thing).
On the other hand - within the broad AEC aspect - things these days are different (especially in fast developing countries the likes of UAE, Saudi Arabia, certain ex USSR "democracies" etc etc). Studies are outsourced even at Preliminary Design stage to various sub-contractors (they undertake the Study completion per discipline as well). This means that N separate groups doing M aspects of the whole ... meaning entropy^(N*M) - that's chaos in plain English.
With this in mind I'm quite (a lot) skeptical about the practical meaning of the whole exchange thing in AEC - at least with regard the countries mentioned (not to mention that several portions of a modern AEC thing are made via MCAD apps - chaos^chaos.
I'll back with more focused issues on that matter.
But the big question is: Grasshopper of Generative Components? Well...let's talk serious SS bikes instead: think a Ducati 1198 and a BMW S1000RR (I have them both): which is "best"? The thing is that not always the best bunny is the fasted bunny and not always the fasted bunny is the best bunny.
Cheers,
Peter
…
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…
cálculos de otra manera imposibles de llevarse a cabo. La idea es mostrar una introducción a estos plugins explicando su funcionamiento general, ventajas y características con una serie de ejercicios prácticos a modo de ejemplo.
De esta manera se hará hincapié en conceptos muy presentes en el diseño e ingeniería avanzada: topología, form-finding, optimización estructural, fractales, loop, algoritmos genéticos y repetitivos, etc.
También, se dedicará un tiempo para sacar partido a tus definiciones y hacer más atractivo el diseño. Esto es, con una correcta exportación, animaciones, vistas...
ESTRUCTURA
- Geometría interactiva flexible
- Diseño generativo
- Reacción difusión
- Geometría desde parámetros ADN
- Visualización de estrategias generativas
- Simulación de crecimiento con sub-D
- Algoritmos generativos genéticos
- Técnicas de visualización
Los plugins que se verán asociados a estos conceptos son:
> Kangaroo: El plugin de Grasshopper más conocido y descargado que ya viene instalado en Grasshopper para Rhino 6. Es un motor físico que permite visualizar en tiempo real simulaciones interactivas y estrategias de form-finding.
> Galapagos: viene ya instalado con Grasshopper, es una plataforma que viene ya incluida en Grasshopper, para aplicar algoritmos evolutivos que se puede usar en situaciones y cálculos sin necesidad de conocer programación.
> Biomorpher: Muy parecido a Galapagos pero más sencillo y visual, Es un optimizador heurístico de cálculo de algoritmos evolutivos y genéticos, obteniendo la mejor solución en función de los parámetros o condiciones impuestos.
> Anemone: Usando algoritmos repetitivos, permite crear loops o estructuras secuenciales como los fractales.
También en función de la dinámica del curso se pueden ver otras apps como Weaverbird (subdivisión de mallas), Firefly, etc…
alluded to:
By the way, Riccardo, as you surely know, for this app, it really only makes sense to use odd integer values on the slider for "half-twists total counts"... When I used "2" with the chain, it froze GH/Rhino twice - perhaps because I didn't disable the offset surface code, I'm not sure - not enough time to explore that further.
So here is what I came up with for offsetting a holed surface - much less code!
Instead of offsetting the surface and using the two offsets as input for 'SrfMorph' to map the holes curves:
I accept the trimmed surface with holes (only one 'SrfSplit' operation instead of two).
'Untrim' the holed surface before doing the offsets.
'Copy Trim (Trim)' from the original holed surface to the two offset surfaces.
Get all the 'Edges' from both surfaces, 'Flip' and 'Loft' them to get all the edge surfaces (hole walls and outer edges).
'Brep Join' the offset holed surfaces and edge surfaces together.
The result is interesting... a "Open Brep" and two "Untrimmed Surface", which are the hidden, internal ends of the shape. Not quite what I wanted. Then I discovered that using 'DeBrep' to get the 'Faces (F)' and 'Brep Join' once more, I get a "Closed Brep" (a solid)!!?? Not sure why but glad it works. I ignore the two end surfaces using 'List Item'.
I suspect that the holes may be slightly different than the way I did it yesterday, but they look good to me. I have no idea how effective this will be with arbitrary, complex surfaces but I encapsulated this code into a 'Thicken' cluster, also enclosed in the attached code:
…
Added by Joseph Oster at 9:01am on October 10, 2015
You can create Design Options using the Iris Layer component!
For each set of geometries that you create, you can assign a layer and define whether it will be visible or not in Virtual Reality on the
Added by IrisVR to IrisVR at 8:34am on January 23, 2017
bi-directional link, the link is unidirectional (downflow only), because of the use of proxies.
Matrix transforms and persistent constraints: I don't think this is true. The parts can have mates to other parts that preserve geometric relationships like 'coincident' , 'aligned' etc. These are essentially bi-directional. GH's algorithmic approach does not do relationships in the same / flexible way. In GH, the 'relationship' has to be part of the generation method that dependent on the creation sequence. I.e. draw line 2 perpendicularly from the end of point of line 1. If you are thinking about parts or assemblies sharing, or referencing parameters as part of the regen process, this is also possible. iLogic does this, and adds scripting. So does Catia. Inventor/iLogic can also access Excel and have all the parameter processing done centrally, if required.
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.
I wouldn't be too hasty here. Yes, you are right about compartmentalisation. I think this needs to happen with GH, in order to deal with scalability/everyday interoperability requirements. Confining projects to one script is not sustainable. MCAD apps have been doing this for ages with 'Relational Modeling'.The Adaptive Components placement example illustrates that it is beneficial to be able to script some 'hints' that can be used on placement of the component. Say, if your component requires points as inputs, then its should be able to find the nearest points to the cursor as it moves around. I think Aish's D# / DesignScript demo'd this kind of behaviour a few years ago. Similarly, Modo Toolpipe reminds me how a lot of UI based transactions can be captured as scripts (macro recorder etc). Allowing this input to be mixed in and/or extended by GH I think will yield a lot of 'modeling efficiency' around the edges. This is a (mis)using GH as an user-programmable 'jig' for placing/manipulating 'dumb' elements in Rhino. It may even give the 'dumb elements' a bit more 'intelligence' by leaving behind embedded attributes, like links to particular construction planes etc.Even if we confine ourselves to scripting. GH is a visual or graphic programming interface. A lot of 'insert and connect' tasks can be done more easily using graphic methods. If we need to select certain vertices on a mesh as inputs for, say, a facade panel, its going to be quicker to do this 'graphically' (like the AC example), then ferreting out the relevant indices in the data tree et al. The 'facade panel' script would then have some coding to filter/prompt the user as to what inputs were acceptable, and so on.
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.
Not sure what you mean here. If the i-parts are built up using sketches /profiles or other more rudimentary features (like Revits' profile/face etc family templates) then reuse should be fairly straight forward. I suppose you could make it like GH scripting, if you cut and paste or include script snippets that generate the desired Inventor features.
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.
I don't think this is true. Look at the automotive body design apps, which are mostly Catia based. All of the body parts are pretty much 'generative' and generated from splines, in a procedural way, using very similar approaches to GH. Or sheet metal design. It's not always about configuration of off-the-shelf items like bolts. And, the constraints manager is available to arbitrate which bit of script fires first, and your mundane workaday associative dimensions etc can update without getting run over by the DAG(s) :-)
…
folder. There are several possibilities for this.
The first that comes to mind is using symbolic links (also known as symlinks). They are like a special kind of shortcut. Whereas a shortcut is a small file itself that links to another location, a symlink is a link that to the operating system and pretty much anything else is indistinguishable from the actual thing. That's why a certain care has to be taken with them, but they are used by the OS much more than might be obvious at first. I have used them on OS X a lot (and in fact all of Time Machine works almost entirely through the use of symlinks). There is a good article on how to use Symlinks easily on Windows as well, using the Link Shell Extension.
So once it's installed you can go to your Grasshopper folder in Roaming and pick it as the link source like so:
Then you change to a location in for example your Dropbox or wherever else you fancy. I have a folder inside my personal Dropbox (we use Dropbox for Business at work, thats why I have 2 Dropbox folders), there is a folder called Apps, which is used by all sorts of Apps that sync using Dropbox. So just right-click in there and create a symlink like so:
So now it will create the symlink and when you double-click it, it will contain the contents of your Grasshopper folder and start syncing:
Sure enough, after some uploading you now have your folder in Dropbox and continually updating:
I will leave this now and see how I get on, but it should be fine and shouldn't cause any issues. Now doing this the other way round, for example to sync the folder on a second computer, that might be another story as things like permissions start to come into play, although it should theoretically work. I have done similar things in the past with other software, but Dropbox is not the best in keeping permissions. Or rather in most cases you DONT want the permissions to stay the same, but for them to be changed to whoever the user is on a different computer and that does not always work as expected. But worth a try. I don't have another computer at hand to try this. On the other computer you would to the steps in opposite order and pick the folder in the Dropbox as the link source and then drop the symlink in the roaming folder (rename the Grasshopper folder that is already in there, so in case it doesnt work you can delete the symlink and rename it back to what it was).
This should theoretically also work with other cloud backups or a file server, but I have not tried those.
You can delete the symlink in the dropbox without problems and it will just delete the link. If you delete something in the Grasshopper folder inside the dropbox it will also be deleted in the roaming folder.
Disclaimer: No guarantees, do this at your own risk, backup your grasshopper folder just in case, be careful with symlinks and use them sparingly, take notes of what you are doing, especially when doing this on more than one computer.
I know on OS X there are several tools specifically for Dropbox that basically do exactly the same like MacDropAny, I am sure there is similar stuff for Windows.…
Added by Armin Seltz at 2:56am on January 25, 2016
ion, extract structural data, produce 2d drawings, and exchange data with other external software. Nemo also includes free tools to create parametric shapes, such as Naca profiles, hydrofoils, keels, rudders, blade propellers, and sail plans.
Born in 2018 as an academic research project at ENSTA Bretagne, Nemo grew up since, immersed in professional naval architecture practice with L2Onaval.
From 2021, Nemo is now available for purchase with commercial or educational licenses. Following license levels are provided to fit every needs depending of user activity :
Free (Designer)
Level 1 (Section + Hydrostatics + Visualization)
Level 1 + 2 (Section + Hydrostatics + Visualization + Resistance + Structure)
We can also help you make best use of our software, provide project guidance, establish specific workflow and create custom tools.
Requirements
Microsoft Windows 10 or Apple Mac OS 12 Monterey :
McNeel Rhinoceros 7 SR26
(Other Rhinoceros, Windows and Mac OS versions have not been tested but may work)
Additional info
Food4Rhino Download
Discourse Forum
Facebook Page
Linkedin Page
Nemo Website
Credits
Authors : Mathieu VENOT
Contributors : Paul POINET, Laurent DELRIEU
…
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