de modelación en 3D y aprovechen las ventajas que plantean, como mejorar su proceso de diseño y explorar múltiples alternativas para un proyecto en lapsos de tiempo muy reducidos en comparación de los métodos tradicionales.
En consecuencia, los alumnos tendrán la posibilidad de disminuir sus tiempos de trabajo, con resultados iguales o incluso mejores a los que obtenían con anterioridad; mejorar la calidad de sus presentaciones y, lo que es más importante, ampliar la fundamentación de sus proyectos en el aspecto funcional y formal, dependiendo de las características del proyecto.
Para lograr estos objetivos, se contemplan dos temarios y un ejercicio práctico.
Al finalizar el curso, los asistentes serán capaces de manejar Rhinoceros y Grasshopper en un nivel medio, con el objetivo que el alumno pueda continuar aprendiendo con alguno de nuestros siguientes workshops o de manera autodidacta.
Además del contenido teórico se incluye un ejercicio práctico, la magnitud del ejercicio y el material que se le destine se definirán con base en el número de asistentes.
El workshop tiene una duración de cinco sesiones:
Sesión 1 – Temario de Rhinoceros
Sesión 2 y 3 – Temario de Grasshopper
Sesión 4 y 5 – Ejercicio práctico
El horario es de 9 am a 4 pm, con una hora de receso para tomar un refrigerio.
No es necesario traer el equipo necesario para trabajar, se cuenta con un equipo para cada persona asi como el material de trabajo para el ejercicio práctico, por lo cual se les recomienda que no traigan portátiles u otro material, únicamente dispositivos de almacenamiento si desean guardar sus trabajos.
El costo del evento es de $3,500 estudiantes y $4,000 profesionales.
(Para poder tener el descuento de estudiante es necesaria una constancia de la universidad de la que proviene, acreditando que el interesado está cursando algún semestre de la carrera. Personas graduadas que estén cursando una maestría o algún grado superior no reciben el descuento).
Para apartar su lugar pueden realizar un depósito de $1,500 y terminar de efectuar el pago antes del 15 de abril si es mediante un depósito bancario o el primer día del evento en efectivo.
El evento se realizará en las oficinas de Vegasot, ubicadas en Circuito Cirujanos No. 23-A
Cd. Satélite, Naucalpan, Edo. de México 53100
http://www.vegasoft.com.mx
Para cualquier duda por favor escriban un correo a luzytextura@gmail.com, por teléfono al 044 55 4381 3302, o en facebook.com/archbernardorivera…
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…
: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
Hi Clemens I've analysed a plate structure using Karamba and wanted to do a convergence analysis on results computed as a function of the number of elements.
Now, when strictly looking at the result magnitudes of internal energy (IE) and maximum displacement (w_max), it's acceptable, that their relative deviations are very small. But I cannot explain the tendencies of their graphs. From what I know, FEM should always compute underestimated results when compared to analytical solutions. So I don't understand why both the IE and w_max seem to be decreasing for an increasing number of elements.
But my main concern is the behaviour of the peak moment, it seems to be simply hill climbing untill suddenly a singularity kicks in. I initially wanted to use the peak moment as a fitness value for optimisation, but with this behaviour, I don't think that would make sense. I've attached my GH file as well.
It would be much appreciated if you could enlighten me on these subjects. Cheers Daniel Andersen
2)
Hi Daniel,
I could not run your definition because I have not all the plug-ins installed that you use.
You are basically right that the displacement should increase with a finer mesh. However the result of the shell analysis also depends on the shape of the triangles (well formed vs. very distorted). In order to test this, I think it would be interesting to use a very simple example (e.g. rectangular plate with one column) where you can easily control mesh generation. Would you like to start a discussion on this in the karamba group at http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/karamba?
It is not a good idea to use the bending moment at a singularity for optimization because the result will be heavily mesh dependent. Also real columns do have a certain diameter and modeling them as point supports introduces an error.
Best,
Clemens
3)
oh, and by the way!
Here's some relevant literature on handling peak moments: https://books.google.dk/books?id=-5TvNxnVMmgC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=blaauwendraad+plates+and+fem&source=bl&ots=SdDcwnrSA1&sig=6HulPmKNIhqKx4_rGxitteMC4CU&hl=da&sa=X&ved=0CDEQ6AEwA2oVChMIg66k0LPaxgIVgY1yCh1KPAeY#v=onepage&q=chapter%2014&f=false (Blaauwendraad, J., 2010. Plates and FEM : Surprises and Pitfalls, see Chapter 14) It would be great if a feature dealing with peak moments could be incorporated in Karamba. In my work, I ended up exporting my models to Robot in order to verify the moment values. Best, Daniel
4)
Hi Daniel,
thank you for your reply and the link to Blaauwendraads excellent book!
At some point I hope to include material nonlinearity in Karamba which will help in dealing with stress singularities.
If you want you could open a discussion with a title like 'moment peaks in shells at point-supports'. Then we could copy and paste the text of our conversation into it.
Best,
Clemens
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------…
the data structure of the input.
I'll create a component that aims to write all the GH_Paths inside the input data structure into separate output parameters. I'll add a menu item to the component that allows users to synch the number of outputs with the current data.
Note that there are some bugs I found related to Undo here, but I'll attempt to fix those asap. The mechanisms employed in this example are correct.
Let's start with the Component class definition and the constructor:
Public Class GH_ExampleComponent_VarOutput
Inherits GH_Component
Public Sub New()
MyBase.New("Extract Paths", "ExPath", "Extract all the paths from a tree", "Sets", "Tree")
End Sub
End Class
Now, the RegisterXXXXParams methods:
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterInputParams(ByVal pManager As GH_Component.GH_InputParamManager)
pManager.Register_GenericParam("Tree", "T", "Data tree to examine", GH_ParamAccess.tree)
End Sub
Protected Overrides Sub RegisterOutputParams(ByVal pManager As GH_Component.GH_OutputParamManager)
'We'll add one output parameter, just to not have a jagged output.
pManager.Register_PathParam("Path 1", "1", "1st path in tree")
End Sub
SolveInstance() is somewhat special, but not very complicated:
Protected Overrides Sub SolveInstance(ByVal DA As IGH_DataAccess)
'We have only one input parameter and it is set to Tree,
'so SolveInstance will only be called once for every solution.
'We don't actually need the data inside the input, we're only interested in the paths.
'So we don't actually need to call DA.GetDataTree, we can just go in and extract the
'paths directly:
Dim paths As IList(Of GH_Path) = Params.Input(0).VolatileData.Paths
'Abort if there is no tree.
If (paths.Count = 0) Then Return
'Post a warning if the number of output parameters does not
'equal the number of paths in the tree.
If (paths.Count < Params.Output.Count) Then
AddRuntimeMessage(GH_RuntimeMessageLevel.Warning, "There are more outputs than paths in the tree.")
ElseIf (paths.Count > Params.Output.Count) Then
AddRuntimeMessage(GH_RuntimeMessageLevel.Warning, "There are fewer outputs than paths in the tree.")
End If
'Iterate over all paths and assign to output parameters.
For i As Int32 = 0 To Math.Min(Params.Output.Count, paths.Count) - 1
DA.SetData(i, paths(i))
Next
End Sub
Adding a menu item to the component menu is relatively straightforward, however handling the menu command requires a fair bit of logic:
Protected Overrides Sub Menu_AppendCustomComponentItems(ByVal iMenu As System.Windows.Forms.ToolStripDropDown)
'Add a single item to the component menu.
Menu_AppendGenericMenuItem(iMenu, "Synch outputs", AddressOf Menu_SynchOutputClicked)
End Sub
Private Sub Menu_SynchOutputClicked(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)
'Here we have to synch the number of output parameters with the number
'of paths in the volatile data tree in the input parameter.
'This requires a few steps:
'1. Determine whether something needs to happen at all.
'2. Record an undo event.
'3. Remove excess outputs or add missing outputs.
Dim paths As IList(Of GH_Path) = Params.Input(0).VolatileData.Paths
If (paths.Count = Params.Output.Count) Then Return 'yay, nothing needs to be done.
'Something needs to be done, record an undo state.
RecordUndoEvent("Synch output")
'We either have too few or too many outputs, determine which is the case.
If (paths.Count > Params.Output.Count) Then
'Add the missing outputs
For i As Int32 = Params.Output.Count + 1 To paths.Count
Dim param As New Grasshopper.Kernel.Parameters.Param_GenericObject()
param.Name = "Path " & i.ToString()
param.NickName = i.ToString()
If (i.ToString.EndsWith("1")) Then
param.Description = i.ToString() & "st path in tree"
ElseIf (i.ToString.EndsWith("2")) Then
param.Description = i.ToString() & "nd path in tree"
ElseIf (i.ToString.EndsWith("3")) Then
param.Description = i.ToString() & "rd path in tree"
Else
param.Description = i.ToString() & "th path in tree"
End If
Params.RegisterOutputParam(param)
Next
Else
'Remove excessive outputs
Do
If (Params.Output.Count <= paths.Count) Then Exit Do
Dim param As IGH_Param = Params.Output(Params.Output.Count - 1)
Params.UnregisterOutputParameter(param)
Loop
End If
Params.OnParametersChanged()
ExpireSolution(True)
End Sub
Finally, we must make sure that the component properly (de)serializes. This means we have to override the Write and Read methods and add additional information to the GHX archive:
Public Overrides Function Write(ByVal writer As GH_IO.Serialization.GH_IWriter) As Boolean
'We must make sure that the number of output parameters is correctly stored.
'We'll use a special function on the GH_ComponentParamServer to accompish this
'without too much sweat.
Params.WriteParameterTypeData(writer)
Return MyBase.Write(writer)
End Function
Public Overrides Function Read(ByVal reader As GH_IO.Serialization.GH_IReader) As Boolean
'Very important, we must make sure all parameters exist before we
'start with the main deserialization.
Params.Clear()
Params.ReadParameterTypeData(reader)
Return MyBase.Read(reader)
End Function
I attached a VB file that contains the code outlined above.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Seattle, WA…
Added by David Rutten at 11:43pm on October 27, 2010
ion of both Ladybug and Honeybee. Notable among the new components are 51 new Honeybee components for setting up and running energy simulations and 15 new Ladybug components for running detailed comfort analyses. We are also happy to announce the start of comprehensive tutorial series on how to use the components and the first one on getting started with Ladybug can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sj_XGz3kzHUoWmpWDXNep1O
A second one on how to use the new Ladybug comfort components can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sho45_D4BV1HKcIz7oVmZ8v
Here is a short list highlighting some of the capabilities of this current Honeybee release:
1) Run EnergyPlus and OpenStudio Simulations - A couple of components to export your HBZones into IDF or OSM files and run energy simulations right from the grasshopper window! Also included are several components for adjusting the parameters of the simulations and requesting a wide range of possible outputs.
2) Assign EnergyPlus Constructions - A set of components that allow you to assign constructions from the OpenStudio library to your Honeybee objects. This also includes components for searching through the OpenStudio construction/material library and components to create your own constructions and materials.
3) Assign EnergyPlus Schedules and Loads - A set of components for assigning schedules and Loads from the Openstudio library to your Honeybee zones. This includes the ability to auto-assign these based on your program or to tweak individual values. You can even create your own schedules from a stream of 8760 values with the new “Create CSV Schedule” component. Lastly, there is a component for converting any E+ schedule to 8760 values, which you can then visualize with the standard Ladybug components
4) Assign HVAC Systems - A set of components for assigning some basic ASHRAE HVAC systems that can be run with the Export to OpenStudio component. You can even adjust the parameters of these systems right in Grasshopper.
Note: The ASHRAE systems are only available for OpenStudio and can’t be used with Honeybee’s EnergyPlus component. Also, only ideal air, VAV and PTHP systems are currently available but more will be on their way soon!
5) Import And Visualize EnergyPlus Results - A set of components to import numerical EnergyPlus simulation results back into grasshopper such that they can be visualized with any of the standard Ladybug components (ie. the 3D chart or Psychrometric chart). Importers are made for zone-level results as well as surface results and surfaces results can be easily separated based on surface type. This also means that E+ results can be analyzed with the new Ladybug comfort calculator components and used in shade or natural ventilation studies. Lastly, there are a set of components for coloring zone/surface geometry with EnergyPlus results and for coloring the shades around zones with shade desirability.
6) Increased Radiance and Daysim Capabilities - Several updates have also been made to the existing Radiance and Daysim components including parallel Radiance Image-based analysis.
7) Visualize HBObject Attributes - A few components have been added to assist with setting up honeybee objects and ensuing the the correct properties have been assigned. These include components to separate surfaces based on boundary condition and components to label surfaces and zones with virtually any of their EnergyPlus or Radiance attributes.
8) WIP Grizzly Bear gbxml Exporter - Lastly, the release includes an WIP version of the Grizzly Bear gbXML exporter, which will continue to be developed over the next few months.
And here’s a list of the new Ladybug capabilities:
1) Comfort Models - Three comfort models that have been translated to python for your use in GH: PMV, Adaptive, and Outdoor (UTCI). Each of these models has a “Comfort Calculator” component for which you can input parameters like temperature and wind speed to get out comfort metrics. These can be used in conjunction with EPW data or EnergyPlus results to calculate comfort for every hour of the year.
2) Ladybug Psychrometric Chart - A new interactive psychrometric chart that was made possible thanks to the releasing of the Berkely Center for the Built Environment Comfort Tool Code (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort-tool). The new psychrometric chart allows you to move the comfort polygon around based on PMV comfort metrics, plot EPW or EnergyPlus results on the psych chart, and see how many hours are made comfortable in each case. The component also allows you to plot polygons representing passive building strategies (like internal heat gain or evaporative cooling), which will adjust dynamically with the comfort polygon and are based on the strategies included in Climate Consultant.
3) Solar Adjusted MRT and Outdoor Shade Evaluator - A component has been added to allow you to account for shortwave solar radiation in comfort studies by adjusting Mean Radiant Temperature. This adjusted MRT can then be factored into outdoor comfort studies and used with an new Ladybug Comfort Shade Benefit Evaluator to design outdoor shades and awnings.
4) Wind Speed - Two new components for visualizing wind profile curves and calculating wind speed at particular heights. These allow users to translate EPW wind speed from the meteorological station to the terrain type and height above ground for their site. They will also help inform the CFD simulations that will be coming in later releases.
5) Sky Color Visualizer - A component has been added that allows you to visualize a clear sky for any hour of the year in order to get a sense of the sky qualities and understand light conditions in periods before or after sunset.
Ready to Start?
Here is what you will need to do:
Download Honeybee and Ladybug from the same link here. Make sure that you remove any old version of Ladybug and Honeybee if you have one, as mentioned on the Ladybug group page.
You will also need to install RADIANCE, DAYSIM and ENERGYPLUS on your system. We already sent a video about how to get RADIANCE and Daysim installed (link). You can download EnergyPlus 8.1 for Windows from the DOE website (http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/energyplus/?utm_source=EnergyPlus&utm_medium=redirect&utm_campaign=EnergyPlus%2Bredirect%2B1).
“EnergyPlus is a whole building energy simulation program that engineers, architects, and researchers use to model energy and water use in buildings.”
“OpenStudio is a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance.”
Make sure that you install ENERGYPLUS in a folder with no spaces in the file path (e.g. “C:\Program Files” has a space between “Program” and “Files”). A good option for each is C:\EnergyPlusV8-1-0, which is usually the default locations when you run the downloaded installer.
New Example Files!
We have put together a large number of new updated example files and you should use these to get yourself started. You can download them from the link on the group page.
New Developers:
Since the last release, we have had several new members join the Ladybug + Honeybee developer team:
Chien Si Harriman - Chien Si has contributed a large amount of code and new components in the OpenStudio workflow including components to add ASHRAE HVAC systems into your energy models and adjust their parameters. He is also the author of the Grizzly Bear gbxml exporter and will be continuing work on this in the following months.
Trygve Wastvedt - Trygve has contributed a core set of functions that were used to make the new Ladybug Colored Sky Visualizer and have also helped sync the Ladybug Sunpath to give sun positions for the current year of 2014
Abraham Yezioro - Abraham has contributed an awesome new bioclimatic chart for comfort analyses, which, despite its presence in the WIP tab, is nearly complete!
Djordje Spasic - Djordje has contributed a number of core functions that were used to make the new Ladybug Wind Speed Calculator and Wind Profile Visualizer components and will be assisting with workflows to process CFD results in the future. He also has some more outdoor comfort metrics in the works.
Andrew Heumann - Andrew contributed an endlessly useful list item selector, which can adjust based on the input list, and has multiple applications throughout Ladybug and Honeybee. One of the best is for selecting zone-level programs after selecting an overall building program.
Alex Jacobson - Alex also assisted with the coding of the wind speed components.
And, as always, a special thanks goes to all of our awesome users who tested the new components through their several iterations. Special thanks goes to Daniel, Michal, Francisco, and Agus for their continuous support. Thanks again for all the support, great suggestions and comments. We really cannot thank you enough.
Enjoy!,
Ladybug + Honeybee Development Team
PS: If you want to be updated about the news about Ladybug and Honeybee like Ladybug’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LadyBugforGrasshopper) or follow ladybug’s twitter account (@ladybug_tool).
…
via MIDI controllers.
my idea is to link PureData to GH via UDP. why pure data? cause' i can relate data like GH to generate numeric relations (and link it to audio generation)
so far i got PD and Processing to talk, but i can't get to grasshopper.
i use this definitions to make pd and processing to talk http://ubaa.net/shared/processing/udp/ and this GHX to get the data to GH http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/attachment/download?id=2985220%3...
i got this data from this post but the GH definition doesn't work for me. i have tried LAN definitions and "the engine" as well but they both freeze, even if i send data thru processing or PD.
i have a lot of questions at this time
1.- why processing tells me that i am getting the data from diferent ports, while i'm using 6000?
2.- why in the UDP definition i get no data out, even if it should say something like "waiting fordata/port/etc.." that's defined in the C# capsule
3.- is there a direct way to get midi data (key and CC) to GH
i also tried to use firefly to get the data via COM port. i know you can do this trick in processing but i just don't know how.
well. if anyone could help me i would share the results here (since it's a magister, results shoud be very interesting)
UDP has allways been a unsolved issue on other posts. maybe we could work it out ;)
Thanks…
Added by jota aldunce at 8:43am on September 28, 2010
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…
but rather than keep everyone waiting, I've decided to share some as they become ready.
This also has the advantage that questions about components can be more easily grouped under the relevant post - so please do add any questions / comments / bugs / suggestions about these examples below.
So today I am posting some examples of the mesh utilities that come with the new release.
While these are not directly physics based, many of the forces and types of relaxation in Kangaroo are designed to work with meshes, and in the process of development I've ended up adding a number of simple utilities to make working with them a little easier.
I recommend also installing Weaverbird which has many more subdivision functions and other useful tools for working with meshes in Grasshopper. Also Plankton, Turtle, MeshEdit and Starling extend these possibilities still further.
Diagonalize
This component replaces every edge of a mesh with a new face. The new faces will always be quads, except for along the boundaries, where they will be triangles. It can be used to easily create diagrids. The input mesh can contain any mix of triangles and quads.
When treating the edges of a quad mesh as springs, diagonalizing it will often significantly change its physical behaviour. If you are trying to planarize a quad mesh, diagonalizing may sometimes allow you to stay closer to a target shape if it matches the curvature directions better.
diagonalize.gh
Checkerboard
This component assigns the faces of a mesh into a checkerboard pattern. The output is a list of 1s and 0s (which could represent black/white or true/false) which can be used to dispatch the faces into 2 lists, where no pair of adjacent faces have the same colour.
One nice application I found for this is applying alternating clockwise and counter-clockwise rotations as shown below. Also, on occasion you may want to planarize a quad mesh, but have some constraints on the shape and grid that prevent this, and triangulating only alternating quads to give a hybrid quad/tri mesh can sometimes be a good compromise, allowing a bit more freedom.
Note - Not all meshes can be assigned a checkerboard pattern!
As a simple example, take a mesh with 3 quads around one vertex - If we assign one black face, then both the neighbouring faces should be white, but then we have 2 white faces adjacent to one another, which violates the checkerboard condition.
Generally, we can say that if a mesh has any internal vertex with an odd number of faces around it, then we cannot apply a consistent checkerboard pattern to it (although not having any odd valence vertices is not in itself an absolute guarantee that a mesh is 'checkerboardable').
checkerboard.gh
WarpWeft
This sorts the edges of a quad mesh into 2 lists of line segments, which are like the warp and weft directions of a fabric. They can also be seen as a sort of mesh equivalent to the u and v isocurves on a NURBS surface.
This can be useful if you want to control the shape of a tension structure, because it allows you to assign different stiffnesses in the 2 directions.
As with the checkerboard component, not all meshes can be consistently assigned warp/weft directions. It follows a similar rule - all internal vertices should have an even number of adjacent faces. With a bit of care, it is usually possible to model the initial mesh in such a way as to allow this.
This component also has an output telling us whether or not each line is on a boundary of the mesh, as we will often want to treat these differently.
Same mesh relaxed with different warp/weft stiffness:
warpweft.gh
MeshCorners
This one is hopefully fairly self explanatory. In many simulations we want to anchor the corner points of a mesh. This saves us having to pick them manually in Rhino.
It works on quad meshes, and looks around the boundary vertices for any which do not have exactly 3 connected edges.
corners.gh
That's all for now. Coming soon - a "mesh tools 2" post explaining more of the components.…