y to heaven (or hell) is full of pain,frustration and tears. In plain English: if you are not totally committed (and willing to pay the heavy price) ... well ... what about forgetting all that freaky stuff? (the best option, trust me)
Note: 99% of beginners dream to learn programing in order to make geometry. But the truth is that this is the least (and rather the most insignificant) that you can achieve especially when working in teams with lot's of CAD/MCAD apps (and verticals) in the practice of tomorrow (bad news: tomorrow is already yesterday).
Anyway: How to go to Hell in just 123 easy steps
Step 1: get the cookiesThe bible PlanA: C# In depth (Jon Skeet).The bible PlanB: C# Step by step (John Sharp).The bible PlanC: C# 5.0 (J/B Albahari) > my favoriteThe reference: C# Language specs ECMA-334The candidates:C# Fundamentals (Nakov/Kolev & Co)C# Head First (Stellman/Greene)C# Language (Jones)Step 2: read the cookies (computer OFF)Step 3: re-read the cookies (computer OFF)...
Step 122: re-read the cookies (computer OFF)Step 123: Open computer > burn computer > computers are a bad thing (not to mention the Skynet trivial thingy).May The Force (the Dark Option) be with you.
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ave the bytes available, they also need to be adjacent. All 4 frikkin trillion of them (assuming you need a million 1000x1000 pixel tiles). That's just not going to happen.
It could be that Photoshop has very clever memory management that allows it to store image data in non-consecutive chunks, but .NET does not allow this.
In fact this can be a real problem with much smaller images as well. In 32-bit Windows you're allowed 2GB of memory per application (sometimes 3). If Rhino+Grasshopper are already using up 1.5GB it's not like you can fit in an extra 0.5GB image before running into problems. Memory is almost never used in a consecutive fashion.
Rhino uses a clever memory manager (not the default Windows one) that results in less memory fragmentation and Grasshopper uses the .NET memory allocator and garbage collector which is capable of defragmenting memory usage. But even with these two optimizations memory fragmentation will occur (and the longer Rhino runs the worse it will get) making it less and less likely that you'll be able to find large consecutive areas of free memory.
The Grasshopper hi-res image exporter creates image tiles of 1000x1000 pixels and saves these files immediately. So it never requires more than 4MB while running. Once it's done making the images, it will start a different application that will stitch these images together. That's what the GrasshopperImageStitcher.exe in your screenshot is. Since this is a new app, it has 2GB of absolutely pristine memory to play with so it's a lot longer before it runs into problems. And when it does run into memory problems it won't bring down Rhino with it.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia…
t ... have a close look on these weird "slots" in the base mount plate - allow the struts to "follow" some base "auto" arrangement (up to a point).
2. After various ... er ... hmm... "communications" with a variety of apps.(some of them are not for public eyes) ...here's a concept demo about what could be done and fool the academics (that's the bit that I like the most)
In plain English (work in GH):
1. Create some wires that represent the struts and PAY attention on their limits of adjustability.
2. Create a nurbs curve through the points indicated with "balls" in the demo. Patch the nurbs.
3. Trim the nurbs surface with some "indicative" profiles OR use Kangaroo by applying a minimum possible relax state (if the latter add the rhomboid cables as well - they deform by pulling the membrane downwards).
4. Optionally put the real things in place (quite GPU taxing that one - do some Viz control).
best, Peter
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rella - Revit/AECOSim etc etc) then scripting is the only way to do business. In fact Dynamo/Generative Components would be your main parametric app ... but GH can offer a thing or two as well.
Other than that here's a very brief explanation upon the "steps":
1. Using connectivity trees (faces to edges, edges to faces, faces to faces) ...
2. ... Find the "internal" edges (meaning edges that are connected to more than ONE face) and store them in a tree. Doing this find the smallest edge as well (for defining the "module" of the pts divisions minus the start/end offset). Used an object type tree since I store the indices of the adjacent faces as well (an object type is a "general" container that can hold cats, dogs, numbers, bananas etc etc ... with the cost of un-boxing when an item is to be used [Note: un-boxing costs time but in this very simple case we can afford the "luxury"]).
NOTE: if you observe the paths on that tree you'll notice that they correspond 1:1 to the indices of the related edges in the EList List (of type Curve).
3. Loop withing the "interior" edges and define the coplanar vectors per edge related with the 2 adjacent faces. These vectors are the Cross Product (Google that) between the edge direction and the normal per face (at u/v: 0,0). Divide the edge (taking into account the start offset AND the ratio of the edge length/ minEdge [as derived from phase 2 as above]). Using these points create a "zing-zag" polyline and store it in the same path as the OEM edge.
NOTE: The polyline is not planar since each teeth is laying to the corresponding adjacent face plane (if the Brep Faces are not planar more "smart" stuff is required).
From this point (not included in V1):
4. Using Face to Edge connectivity data: IF a path exists (in the polyline tree as in 3 above) with the given index sample this polyline as Curve ... if not get the OEM Curve (case: "boundary"/perimeter Brep Faces). Join the Curves (take provision to report failures) and project them to the corresponding Brep Face plane (case: planar face) or ... to some suitable "mean" plane. Define a planar Brep out of the newly created closed planar Curve and extrude it (actually the Brep Face of it) both sides at once for doing a "solid". If Brep Faces are not planar ... well things are a bit more complicated (not nuclear science ... just another approach is required).
In fact ... is a bit more challenging than that since there's assembly tolerance AND clash issues around ... but this is the "general" idea anyway. …
ts connectors and slots that allow CNC machining the facets and connectors for assembly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34OvgflJEmI
We developed this construction methodology earlier this year while working on a large scale parametric structure for Midburn, the Israeli Burning Man. While doing so I used grasshopper to generate the facets for the geometry, while a friend on the team (Matan Zohar) wrote a javascript app that translated the mesh into connectors and slots for CNC manufacturing. You can see more about the project here:
http://www.shlomimir.com/triped/
I wrote this component as an exercise in learning rhinoscript and python, with the purpose of bringing the functionality into the grasshopper workflow. It's now to the point where it is working for triangle and square welded meshes while outputting the connectors and slots as an unorganized list.
Questions and To Do List
1. I'm new to object oriented coding and functions, and basically just wrote the whole thing as a series of conditional loops with two dimensional arrays holding the data. Planning on restructuring this better, would love any tips.
2. Right now outputting the connectors and slots on the input mesh itself in 3D, planning on setting this up layed out on one plane to organize for cutting. I was wondering if there are any existing tools for this or if I need to do this manually.
3. Labeling connectors and slots. Is there anyway to output text from python that can be later baked into the rhino for labeling?…
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
st shortest path. The guiding splines would work like a forcefield so that paths are "drawn" towards them with a user defined strength and radius of influence.Since each path is basically independent, it should be relatively straight forward to multithread. I downloaded the C# code for the pathfinding node and have to see if I'm up to it.
Would also be interesting to know how far away the first beta of a multithreaded GH 2 is.
I also had some hopes when "Fabric Engine" showed a demo of a Rhino exporter, since its "Canvas" is an extremely optimized node system that's fully multithreaded and optionally uses the GPU, which could be interesting to explore for some heavy lifting if they for instance would attach it to GH. But I guess it does not make much sense for them as a target.
Above image uses 20000 random points. In Softimage XSI ICE this would not be much, since it's nodes are fully multithreaded and optimized for huge numbers of particles and point deformation. In GH, with anything above 500 points, things get rather "meditative".
Illustrator takes up to half an hour after each and every change to colour, line style, blending mode etc. I have one even more complex file with over 3 GB size and there Illustrator (CS6 x64) goes into some kind of trance and after some hours of thinking moves on to some advanced psychotic, catatonic state to never fully return... ;-)So usually I run it in the background while doing something else...
I recently tried different other vector graphics apps (Inkscape, Affinity Designer, Xara) but they were even worse if they were able to open the files at all. Maybe I should give Corel a try too.
Cheers and thanks for your offer! Your work is a major inspiration for me while learning Grasshopper!
Tom…
eventually found out about genetic algorithms on which I found extensive researches, projects,... ! I looked into it and ended up on a few papers which I believe are the jumpstart for my master thesis.
"Galapagos; on the logic and limitations of generic solvers" by David RuttenArticle in Architectural Design 83(2) March 2013
"Black-box optimisation methods for architectural design" by Thomas Wortmann and Giacomo NanniciniConference Paper: CAADRIA 2016, At Melbourne, AU, Volume: 177-186
So I started looking into alternatives to genetic algorithms in architectural design.So far, I've ended up on :
Thomas Wortmann's work with the surrogate(or model) based optimization approach!You can check out the tool he developped for GH (Opossum):http://www.food4rhino.com/app/opossum-optimization-solver-surrogate-models
Judyta Cichocka's work, specially with the Swarm approachYou can check out the tool she developped for GH (Silvereye):http://www.food4rhino.com/app/silvereye-pso-based-solver
And that's it !!! I've been researching through article references (mainly on "researchgate") but I'm now stuck in a loop of references I already visited!That probably means the litterature on the subject is not (yet) extended but I might probably be missing something.The keywords make it difficult to search : "optimisation", "algorithms", "architecture", send me most of the time to computational engineering and deep mathematics papers I unfortunately do not have the background knowledge to comprehend ! So there it is ! If you have any clue of where (or how ! ) I should be looking, please tell me :)I know Mr Rutten is pretty active on the forum so hopefully... (fingers crossed :p) !Also if you have any good tips for getting into algorithms in general (you think could help), I'd be glad to hear(read) it ! A book, tutorials maybe ?!So, autors, architects, projects books, articles, conferences I should go to,specialized architecture offices/studios (I'm also looking for an internship so ...).If you know about a more appropriate forum please let me know !If you want to get deeper into this, you can contact me at :
e1635331@student.tuwien.ac.at
tdissaux@student.ulg.ac.be
My master thesis is due for may 2018 but I have a paper to write for January 2018 in order to be elligible for a PHD program afterwards.What I mean by that is that if you read this message in 6 month, I'll still be open to discussion !
I am right now an erasmus student at TUWien (Vienna) but my main university is The university of Liège in Belgium.I can handle French, English, Italian litterature and eventually Dutch if really you think it's worth it ! I have access to most online libraries via my university's portals so access shouldn't be an issue !I'm very excited to hear from you I wish you all a great day,Cheers,Thomas
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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