project below- should I be learning Grasshopper & Rhino or just Rhino first?
I'm trying to panel modules with low tolerances- I've prototyped regular shapes like geodesics and am now looking to experiment with irregular shapes with lots of different panel shapes.
I understand some things are best done through Grasshopper when using Paneling Tools- I'm trying to figure out if I can do what I want to achive with PT alone or should do it through Grasshopper (or some other route).
I’m on the MAC WIP - The module was built in Sketchup - all the components seem to be in order as blocks though am having problems running the ptpanel3dcustom command - thinking maybe a bug in the WIP or something wrong with my input or that I imported the sketchup file the wrong way. (I dropped it in the window) - If the 3D command is run it doesn’t do anything - if 2D (ptpanelgridcustom) it crashes.
The tileing pattern - the green rectangle is a refrence. each tile contains 4 blocks with 3 more nested in each.
How the module tiles.
The other thing I'm trying to do is specify that most of the lines in the panels don’t bend/curve when they are paneled (or something like Cage Edited). For my purposes the length & angles can change while the lines must remain straight.
These images show a test tile to be panneled on a ellipsoid. When the tile is mapped to the grid the lines curve, this is an extreme example but notice allot of tiles far from the hemespheres are also bent slightly.
These two questions have me stumped the most for now. What should I look into get a better handle on these problem areas? Maybe I should try recreating the work on a windows machine? or perhaps I should get started with Grasshopper?
Thanks for reading.
Lu…
bsp;
-Vehicle elements (3D objects and a component for custom vehicles; models from Google Warehouse)
-Traffic Velocity Graphs, drawn on every trajectory curve (allow custom graphs drawn)
-Traffic regulation elements (such as Traffic Lights and Stop Signals) and traffic density
-Particle Systems on trajectory curves, just to manage the traffic regulations and avoid collisions based on security distances
-Traffic Vehicle Animation Modes (Dots, Bounding Boxes or complex Meshes with attributes for final rendering (Giulio Piacentino´s Render Animation)
-Vehicle Lights and Vehicle Sights, to make visual studies
Team:
-Sergio del Castillo Tello (Doctor No, lead programmer)
-Everyone that wants to be involved, support.. these tools
The development of Roadrunner is planned to take part within a Research Group Program at ETSAM (University of Architecture in Madrid); This forum group is created just to test the interest of the community, while we keep on developing (it is still being tested), probably we will share the whole thing in the future. Cheers!
Traffic Cluster Scheme
Traffic Elements
Traffic Urban Systems
Vehicle Elements
Roadrunner - overview
Roadrunner 0 Basics
Roadrunner 1 Modes
Roadrunner 2 Elements
Roadrunner 3 Urban Systems…
ature. By investigating the process of decay across various scales, we will formulate rules of generating decomposition as our design research area. These rules will evolve into design strategies for the creation and fabrication of a large-scale prototype. The design and fabrication process will be informed by the use of robotic fabrication techniques.
The three-week long programme is formulated as a two-phase process. During the two-week initial phase, participants benefit from the unique atmosphere and facilities of AA’s London home. The second phase, lasting for a week, shifts to AA’s woodland site in Hooke Park and revolves around the fabrication and assembly of a full-scale architectural intervention.
Prominent Features of the programme:
• Teaching team: Participants engage in an active learning environment where the large tutor to student ratio (5:1) allows for personalized tutorials and debates.
• Facilities: AA Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) offers laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3d printing facilities. The facilities at AA Hooke Park allow for the fabrication of one-to-one scale prototypes with a 3-axis CNC router, various woodworking power tools, and robotic fabrication.
• Computational skills: The toolset of Summer DLAB includes but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Processing, Grasshopper, and various analysis tools.
• Theoretical understanding: The dissemination of fundamental design techniques and relevant critical thinking methodologies through theoretical sessions and seminars forms one of the major goals of Summer DLAB.
• Professional awareness: Participants ranging from 2nd year students to PhD candidates and full-time professionals experience a highly-focused collaborative educational model which promotes research-based design and making.
• Fabrication: According to the specific agenda of each year, a one-to-one scale prototype is fabricated and assembled by design teams.
• Lecture series: Taking advantage of its unique location, London, Summer DLAB creates a vibrant atmosphere with its intense lecture programme.
Eligibility: The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
Accreditation: Participants receive the AA Visiting School Certificate with the completion of the Programme.
Applications: The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £1964 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee. A deposit of £381 is required when registering with the online form. The deadline for applications is 20 July 2015. No portfolio or CV is required. Online application link:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=325
Return train tickets between London-Hooke Park, accommodation & food in Hooke Park, and materials from Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) are included in the fees.
Programme Directors:
Elif Erdine (AA Summer DLAB Director): elif.erdine@aaschool.ac.uk
Alexandros Kallegias (AA Summer DLAB Director): alexandros.Kallegias@aaschool.ac.uk
…
ange’ for its 2016 cycle, as a starting point to investigate principles of natural formation processes and interpret them as innovative architectonic spaces. These concepts are carefully interwoven with spatial, performance-based, and structural criteria in order to create full-scale working prototypes.
The three-week long programme is formulated as a two-phase process. During the two-week initial phase, participants benefit from the unique atmosphere and facilities of AA’s London home. The second phase, lasting for a week, shifts to AA’s woodland site in Hooke Park and revolves around the robotic fabrication and assembly of a full-scale architectural intervention.
Prominent Features of the programme:
• Teaching team: Participants engage in an active learning environment where the large tutor to student ratio (5:1) allows for personalized tutorials and debates.
• Facilities: AA Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) offers laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3d printing facilities. The facilities at AA Hooke Park allow for the fabrication of one-to-one scale prototypes with a 3-axis CNC router, various woodworking power tools, and robotic fabrication.
• Computational skills: The toolset of Summer DLAB includes but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Processing, Grasshopper, and various analysis tools.
• Theoretical understanding: The dissemination of fundamental design techniques and relevant critical thinking methodologies through theoretical sessions and seminars forms one of the major goals of Summer DLAB.
• Professional awareness: Participants ranging from 2nd year students to PhD candidates and full-time professionals experience a highly-focused collaborative educational model which promotes research-based design and making.
• Robotic Fabrication: According to the specific agenda of each year, scaled working models are produced via advanced digital machining tools, followed by the fabrication of a one-to-one scale prototype with the Kuka KR150 robot.
• Lecture series: Taking advantage of its unique location, London, Summer DLAB creates a vibrant atmosphere with its intense lecture programme.
Eligibility: The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
Accreditation: Participants receive the AA Visiting School Certificate with the completion of the Programme.
Applications: The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £1900 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee. A deposit of £381 is required when registering with the online form. The deadline for applications is 11 July 2016. No portfolio or CV is required. Online application link:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=392
Return train tickets between London-Hooke Park, accommodation & food in Hooke Park, and materials from Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) are included in the fees.
For inquiries, please contact:
elif.erdine@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Director)
alexandros.kallegias@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Director)
…
n complex architectural design and fabrication processes, relying heavily on materiality and performance. The programme brings together a range of experts – tutors and lecturers – from internationally acclaimed academic institutions and practices, Architectural Association, Zaha Hadid Architects, among others.
Taking place at the unique atmosphere of AA’s London home, the three-week long programme is formulated as a two-stage process. During the initial stage, participants are introduced to core concepts related to material processes, computational methods, and various digital fabrication techniques. During the second stage, the fabrication and assembly of a full-scale architectural intervention with the use of robotic fabrication techniques unifies the design goals of the programme.
Prominent Features of the programme:
• Teaching team: Participants engage in an active learning environment where the large tutor to student ratio (5:1) allows for personalized tutorials and debates.
• Facilities: AA Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) offers laser cutting, CNC milling, 3d printing facilities, and 2 KUKA robotic arms.
• Computational skills: The toolset of Summer DLAB includes but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Processing, Grasshopper, and various analysis tools.
• Theoretical understanding: The dissemination of fundamental design techniques and relevant critical thinking methodologies through theoretical sessions and seminars forms one of the major goals of Summer DLAB.
• Professional awareness: Participants ranging from 2nd year students to PhD candidates and full-time professionals experience a highly-focused collaborative educational model which promotes research-based design and making.
• Robotic Fabrication: According to the specific agenda of each year, scaled working models are produced via advanced digital machining tools, followed by the fabrication of one-to-one scale prototypes with the use of KUKA KR60 and KR30 robots.
• Lecture series: Taking advantage of its unique location, London, Summer DLAB creates a vibrant atmosphere with its intense lecture programme.
Eligibility: The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
Accreditation: Participants gain 1 Year AA Visiting Membership and are awarded AA Certificate of Attendance at the successful completion of AA Summer DLAB.
Applications: The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £1900 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee. Discount options for groups are available. Please contact the AA Visiting School Coordinator for more details.
The deadline for applications is 17 July 2017. No portfolio or CV, only requirement is the online application form and fees. The online application can be reached from:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=460
For inquiries, please contact:
elif.erdine@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Head)
alexandros.kallegias@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Head)…
lysis, and large-scale prototyping techniques. The research generated at Summer DLAB has been published in international media and peer-reviewed conference papers.
AA Summer DLAB investigates on the correlations between form, material, and structure through the rigorous implementation of computational methods for design, analysis, and fabrication, coupled with analog modes of physical experimentation. Each cycle of the programme devises custom-made architectural processes through the creation of novel associations between conventional and contemporary design and fabrication techniques. The research culminates in the design and fabrication of a one-to-one scale prototype realized by robotic fabrication techniques.
Prominent Features of the programme:
Teaching team: Summer DLAB tutors are selected from recent graduates / current tutors at the AA and the small student ratio (5:1) allows for personalized tutorials and debates.
Facilities: AA Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) offers laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3d printing facilities, and 2 KUKA robotic arms.
Computational skills: The toolset of Summer DLAB includes but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Grasshopper and various computational analysis tools.
Theoretical understanding: The dissemination of fundamental design techniques and relevant critical thinking methodologies through theoretical sessions and seminars forms one of the major goals of Summer DLAB.
Professional awareness: Participants ranging from 2nd year students to PhD candidates and full-time professionals experience a highly-focused collaborative educational model which promotes research-based design and making.
Robotic Fabrication: Scaled working models are produced via advanced digital machining tools each year, followed by the fabrication of 1:1 scale prototypes with the use of KUKA KR60 and KR30 robots.
Lecture series: Taking advantage of its unique location, London, Summer DLAB creates a vibrant atmosphere with its intense lecture programme.
Eligibility: The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
Accreditation: Participants gain 1 Year AA Visiting Membership and are awarded AA Certificate of Attendance at the successful completion of AA Summer DLAB.
Applications: The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £1950 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee. Discount options for groups are available. Please contact the AA Visiting School Coordinator for more details.
The deadline for applications is 16 July 2018. No portfolio or CV, only requirement is the online application form and fees. The online application can be reached from:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=537
For inquiries, please contact:
elif.erdine@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Head)…
lysis, and large-scale prototyping techniques. The research generated at Summer DLAB has been published in international media and peer-reviewed conference papers.
AA Summer DLAB investigates on the correlations between form, material, and structure through the rigorous implementation of computational methods for design, analysis, and fabrication, coupled with analog modes of physical experimentation. Each cycle of the programme devises custom-made architectural processes through the creation of novel associations between conventional and contemporary design and fabrication techniques. The research culminates in the design and fabrication of a one-to-one scale prototype realized by robotic fabrication techniques.
Prominent Features of the programme:
Teaching team: Summer DLAB tutors are selected from recent graduates / current tutors at the AA and the small student ratio (5:1) allows for personalized tutorials and debates.
Facilities: AA Digital Prototyping Lab (DPL) offers laser cutting, CNC milling, and 3d printing facilities, and 2 KUKA robotic arms.
Computational skills: The toolset of Summer DLAB includes but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Grasshopper and various computational analysis tools.
Theoretical understanding: The dissemination of fundamental design techniques and relevant critical thinking methodologies through theoretical sessions and seminars forms one of the major goals of Summer DLAB.
Professional awareness: Participants ranging from 2nd year students to PhD candidates and full-time professionals experience a highly-focused collaborative educational model which promotes research-based design and making.
Robotic Fabrication: Scaled working models are produced via advanced digital machining tools each year, followed by the fabrication of 1:1 scale prototypes with the use of KUKA KR60 and KR30 robots.
Lecture series: Taking advantage of its unique location, London, Summer DLAB creates a vibrant atmosphere with its intense lecture programme.
Eligibility: The workshop is open to architecture and design students and professionals worldwide.
Accreditation: Participants gain 1 Year AA Visiting Membership and are awarded AA Certificate of Attendance at the successful completion of AA Summer DLAB.
Applications: The AA Visiting School requires a fee of £1950 per participant, which includes a £60 Visiting Membership fee. Discount options for groups are available. Please contact the AA Visiting School Coordinator for more details.
The deadline for applications is 08 July 2019. No portfolio or CV, only requirement is the online application form and fees. The online application can be reached from:
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/ONLINEAPPLICATION/visitingApplication.php?schoolID=603
For inquiries, please contact:
elif.erdine@aaschool.ac.uk (Programme Head)
…
Added by elif erdine at 10:16am on February 19, 2019
URBS cup surface, and boy oh boy did it ever work more uniformly than using 3D orb cutters on a 3D cup. Different sized spheres return the *same* hex grid only less and less raised up as the spheres get very large.
My first question is whether these are different in character or just in Z scaling, so if I rescale them all to the same Z thickness, after extracting only the relief structure via Boolean union and splitting...and they are only *slightly* different in character, which means mere Z re-scaling of a single moderate ball size relief is an appropriate cheat to avoid slow Boolean union re-making each relief Z scale with different sized balls.
The one on the right is a very shallow relief scaled up to the same Z thickness as the pure sphere one on the left. And really, we will be mostly scaling *down* from a thicker master surface so that will attenuate any weirdness in the curvature. Indeed, I see no difference, so it makes sense to only archive the thickest one so we can control the full range of thicknesses, all the way to nearly flat bulbs. Here is the thickest one, just before the balls lose holes between them, scaled down compared to a shallow one made with huge balls to start with:
Now we just use Rhino Flow Along Surface or the Grasshopper Jackalope plug-in Sporf to morph this flat system onto our lathe form.
With Rhino history for the Flow Along Surface step I can rescale the original in Z and wait twenty seconds to see the update:
There are sad edge artifacts that will require some strategy to retain or later delete a whole row:
Maybe add more geometry to later delete or make a solid to hold stuff together?
So vastly decreasing the cell count and changing grid direction to match your cup:
The edges came out fine on this one, happily. The isocurve count has been increased by the Flow Along Surface command:
It can't be filleted yet since the joint where the cup NURBS surface has a joint now leaves feathery edges, so I went back and duplicated the border of the flat array, offset and lofted to make a protecting surface:
But that gave crazy artifacts:
I'm just going to use symmetry to fill in the joint with good faces that are not having to be joined as two halves. I had to turn my Rhino units tolerance down from a silly 0.0001 to 0.01 units to get a good re-join, but it still won't fillet without leaving holes.
SO LET'S FILLET THE FLAT THING. Same problem but a bit faster, and actually repairable manually. Rhino 5 is buggy as hell with core commands, damn it. This is not world class behavior.
Let's try it in Rhino 6 WIP, our great hope of the future: nope, the same. I had to simply manually copy the missing pieces from where it did work, which at least is easy to do in flatland. Now I get a cup:
This can *all* be done quickly in Rhino without Grasshopper, and Rhino affords you fast cage editing of the original flat array that Grasshopper cannot yet do. You just need to use Analyze Direction to be able to swap UV directions of the source or target and flip the source surface to achieve concave vs. convex patterns.
Grasshopper doesn't even have a fillet (multiple) edges component so there's not a lot of advantage to having some super slow parametric system via Grasshopper. It's not like you'll be able to see the changes fast enough to tweak a design.…
This is the actual reason I'm going through all this. I want to develop an algorithm that can be applied consistently and produce good results.
Here is a a little background. I'm working on my master's thesis in structural analysis. My thesis is on seismic behaviour of a roman temple in Portugal. I will be using a method of analysis suitable for block structures called the discrete element method. I am using a commercial code called 3DEC for this.
Now in order to the analysis I need to construct a 3D block model of my structure. I received a 3D scan of the entire structure (in *.wrl) format and spent a week trying to clean it up and slice it into the blocks that make up the structure. Now I want to use the scanned geometry of the blocks and describe a simplified prism around each that will represent the block in my analysis. I've attached a file with one of the columns in the temple. I think (at least with my tests so far) that it is representative of the all the blocks I'm dealing with.
Now my criteria for creation of the blocks:
I would like the contact area between the blocks to be as close as possible to the actual drum contact area,
I would like to get the volume of the blocks to be as close as possible (secondary to the contact area) to the volume of the actual drums in order to insure that the weight distribution in the structure is as close to reality as possible,
I would like the shape of the contact area to be as close to reality as possible
I order to satisfy all these requirements, I've done the following in my grasshopper file:
I take a section at the top and bottom of each of the drum meshes. I use this to extract the contact outline at the top and bottom of the drum. This is sometimes problematic and requires me to clean up the model and remove features that interfere.
Next I take each surface and try to fit a minimum circle around it. I try to do this because in my mind this is the best possible way to find the actual centre of the drum when there is cut outs and deterioration. This works well as long as more than half of the contact surface is still in its circular shape (third block from bottom in the example file doesn't satisfy this requirement and thus causes problems).
Knowing the centre, I use an algorithm I created in VB to search for one of the flutes on the contact profile. My ideas is that if I can find one of the flutes, I can then find the others by just going around at 30 degrees (there are 12 flutes) and find the location of all the flutes. In the VB code I've tried to explain my algorithm so I won't explain it here. I also think this algorithm is needlessly complicated and stupid as I'll explain later.
Once I've got one of the flutes, I just find the intersection of a line with at every 30 degrees with the outline curve.
Having all (12) points around the perimeter, I use an loop to scale the shape around the centre of the circle I found in step 1 to get the area within a tolerance value of the actual contact area (satisfying requirement 1). I was using HoopSnake before, but it required resetting every time so I decided to write my own thing.
I then connect the points on both top and bottom to get a solid block.
Now the problems are as follows:
Sometimes the algorithm doesn't find the best location as the starting point. As I said an important thing is that the circle is tangent to the flutes and that is true only if the column profile is larger than a half-circle.
The software I use requires convex blocks. I've tried to remedy this by using convex hull component before step 5 to insure the surfaces are convex.
I'm having issues sometimes with the alignment of top and bottom points. I think I just need to implement a component that sorts the points around a single basis so that there is no twisting.
I've been experimenting with convex hull as a general approach for defining the corner points, but I'm having problem take the convex hull curve and breaking it into a 12 sided polygon, preserving as much as possible the location of the flutes and the general shape of the contact surface.
I'm really sorry about the long post and complicated question. I hope someone can give some pointers on what I could try. I understand that this is not an easy question and that it is more a question of doing something rather than asking about grasshopper itself. My goal is to have an algorithm that I can explain as a general method for others to use in the future when dealing with these structures. This is only a small minor part of my thesis (the analysis is what is important) but it is taking a lot of time to figure out.
If you have any other questions, I would be more than happy to provide a better explanation. In the file I have created a region with all my input parameters. You can choose a different mesh from that point and change various settings. I hope that is self-explanatory.
Thanks for all your help,
Ali
BTW: I'm really sorry for the poor way I've done this stuff so far. I'm not a programmer and apart from some small macros in Excel I don't know much about this stuff. To add to that, I've just started with Rhino and Grasshopper about five days ago after almost pulling out all my hair trying to do this with AutoCAD!…
e a fundamental failure on my part. On the other hand, Grasshopper isn't supposed to be on a par with most other 3D programs. It is emphatically not meant for manual/direct modelling. If you would normally tackle a problem by drawing geometry by hand, Grasshopper is not (and should never be advertised as) a good alternative.
I get that. That’s why that 3D shape I’m trying to apply the voronoi to was done in NX. I do wonder where the GUI metaphor GH uses comes from. It reminds me of LabVIEW.
"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."
Grasshopper ships with about 1000 components (rounded to the nearest power of ten). I'm adding more all the time, either because new functionality has been exposed in the Rhino SDK or because a certain component makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Adding pre-canned components that do the same as '8 or 10 components strung together' for the heck of it will balloon the total number of components everyone has to deal with. If you find yourself using the same 8 to 10 components together all the time, then please mention it on this forum. A lot of the currently existing components have been added because someone asked for it.
It’s not the primary components that catalyzed this thought but rather the secondary components. I was toying with a component today (twist from jackalope) that made use of three toggle components. The things they controlled are checkboxes in other apps.
Take a look at this jpg. Ignore differences; I did 'em quickly. GH required 19 components to do what SW did with 4 commands. Note the difference in screen real estate.
As an aside, I really hate SolidWorks (SW). But going forward, I’ll use it as an example because it’s what most people are familiar with.
"[...] has a far cleaner and more intuitive interface. So does SolidWorks, Inventor, CATIA, NX, and a bunch of others."
Again, GH was not designed to be an alternative to these sort of modellers. I don't like referring to GH as 'parameteric' as that term has been co-opted by relational modellers. I prefer to use 'algorithmic' instead. The idea behind parameteric seems to be that one models by hand, but every click exists within a context, and when the context changes the software figures out where to move the click to. The idea behind algorithmic is that you don't model by hand.
I agree, and disagree. I believe parametric applies equally to GH AND SW, NX, and so forth, while algorithmic is unique to GH (and GC and Dynamo I think). Thus I understand why you prefer the term. I too tend to not like referring to GH as a parametric modeler for the same reason.
But I think it oversimplifies it to say parametric modelers move the clicks. SW tracks clicks the same way GH does; GH holds that information in geometry components while SW holds it in a feature in the feature tree. In both GH and SW edits to the base geometry will drive a recalculation, but more commonly, it’s an edit to input data, beit equations or just plain numbers, that drive a recalculation.
I understand the difference in these programs. What brought me to GH is that it can create a visual dialog that standard modelers can’t. But as I've grown more comfortable with it I’ve come to realize that the GUI of GH and the GUI of other parametric modelers, while looking completely different, are surprisingly interchangeable. Do not misconstrue that I’m suggesting that GH should replace it’s GUI with SW’s. I’m not. I refrain from suggesting anything specific. I only suggest that you allow yourself to think radically.
This is not to say there is no value in the parametric approach. Obviously it is a winning strategy and many people love to use it. We have considered adding some features to GH that would make manual modelling less of a chore and we would still very much like to do so. However this is such a large chunk of work that we have to be very careful about investing the time. Before I start down this road I want to make sure that the choice I'm making is not 'lame-ass algorithmic modeller with some lame-ass parametrics tacked on' vs. 'kick-ass algorithmic modeller with no parametrics tacked on'.
Given a choice, I'd pick kick-ass algorithmic modeller with no parametrics tacked on.
2. Visual Programming.
I'm not exactly sure I understand your grievance here, but I suspect I agree. The visual part is front and centre at the moment and it should remain there. However we need to improve upon it and at the same time give programmers more tools to achieve what they want.
I'll admit, this is a bit tough to explain. As I've re-read my own comment, I think it was partly a precursor to the context sensitivity point and touched upon other stated points.
This now touches upon my own ignorance about GH’s target market. Are you moving toward a highly specialized tool for programmers and/or mathematicians, or is the intent to create a tool that most designers can master? If it’s the former, rock on. You’re doing great. If it’s the latter, I’m one of the more technically sophisticated designers I know and I’m lost most of the time when using GH.
GH allows the same freedom as a command line editor. You can do whatever you like, and it’ll work or not. And you won’t know why it works or doesn't until you start becoming a bit of an expert and can actually decipher the gibberish in a panel component. I often feel GH has the ease of use of DOS with a badass video card in front.
Please indulge my bit of storytelling. Early 3D modelers, CATIA, Unigraphics, and Pro-Engineer, were unbelievably difficult to use. Yet no one ever complained. The pain of entry was immense. But once you made it past the pain threshold, the salary you could command was very well worth it. And the fewer the people who knew how to use it, the more money you could demand. So in a sense, their lack of usability was a desirable feature among those who’d figured it out.
Then SolidWorks came along. It could only do a fraction of what the others did, but it was a fraction of the cost, it did most of what you needed, and anyone could figure it out. There was even a manual on how to use it. (Craziness!) Within a few short years, the big three all had to change their names (V5, NX, and Wildfire (now Creo)) and change the way they do things. All are now significantly easier to use.
I can tell that the amount of development time that’s gone into GH is immense and I believe the functionality is genius. I also believe it’s ease of use could be greatly improved.
Having re-read my original comments, I think it sounded a bit snotty. For that I apologize.
3. 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."
Unfortunately it's not as simple as that. Whether or not a conversion between two data types makes sense is often dependent on the actual values. If you plug a list of curves into a Line component, none of them may be convertible. Should I therefore not allow this connection to be made? What if there is a single curve that could be converted to a line? What if you want to make the connection now, but only later plan to add some convertible curves to the data? What you made the connection back when it was valid, but now it's no longer valid, wouldn't it be weird if there was a connection you couldn't make again?
I've started work on GH2 and one of the first things I'm writing now is the new data-conversion logic. The goal [...] is to not just try and convert type A into type B, but include information about what sort of conversion was needed (straightforward, exotic, far-fetched. etc.) and information regarding why that type was assigned.
You are right that under some conditions, we can be sure that a conversion will always fail. For example connecting a Boolean output with a Curve input. But even there my preferred solution is to tell people why that doesn't make sense rather than not allowing it in the first place.
You bring up both interesting points and limits to my understanding of coding. I’ve reached the point in my learning of GH where I’m just getting into figuring out the sets tab (and so far I’m not doing too well). I often find myself wondering “Is all of this manual conditioning of the data really necessary? Doesn’t most software perform this kind of stuff invisibly?” I’d love to be right and see it go away, but I could easily be wrong. I’ve been wrong before.
5. 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."
I was thinking of just zooming in on a component would eventually provide easier ways to access settings and data.
I kinda like this. It’s a continuation of what you’re currently doing with things like the panel component.
"Could some of these items disappear if they are contextually inappropriate or gray out if they're unlikely?"
It's almost impossible for me to know whether these things are 'unlikely' in any given situation. There are probably some cases where a suggestion along the lines of "Hey, this component is about to run 40,524 times. It seems like it would make sense to Graft the 'P' input." would be useful.
6. Integration.
"Why isn't it just live geometry?"
This is an unfortunate side-effect of the way the Rhino SDK was designed. Pumping all my geometry through the Rhino document would severely impact performance and memory usage. It also complicates the matter to an almost impossible degree as any command and plugin running in Rhino now has access to 'my' geometry.
"Maybe add more Rhino functionality to GH. GH has no 3D offset."
That's the plan moving forward. A lot of algorithms in Rhino (Make2D, FilletEdge, Shelling, BlendSrf, the list goes on) are not available as part of the public SDK. The Rhino development team is going to try and rectify this for Rhino6 and beyond. As soon as these functions become available I'll start adding them to GH (provided they make sense of course).
On the whole I agree that integration needs a lot of work, and it's work that has to happen on both sides of the isle.
You work for McNeel yet you seem to speak of them as a separate entity. Is this to say that there are technical reasons GH can only access things through the Rhino SDK? I’d think you would have complete access to all Rhino API’s. I hope it’s not a fiefdom issue, but it happens.
7. Documentation.
Absolutely. Development for GH1 has slowed because I'm now working on GH2. We decided that GH1 is 'feature complete', basically to avoid feature creep. GH2 is a ground-up rewrite so it will take a long time until something is ready for testing. During this time, minor additions and of course bug fixes will be available for GH1, but on a much lower frequency.
Documentation is woefully inadequate at present. The primer is being updated (and the new version looks great), but for GH2 we're planning a completely new help system. People have been hired to provide the content. With a bit of luck and a lot of work this will be one of the main selling points of GH2.
It begs the question that I have to ask. When is GH1.0 scheduled to launch? And if you need another person to proofread the current draft of new primer.
patrick@girgen.com
I can’t believe wikipedia has an entry for feature creep. And I can’t believe you included it. It made me giggle. Thanks.
8. 2D-ness.
"I know you'll disagree completely, but I'm sticking to this. How else could an omission like offsetsurf happen?"
I don't fully disagree. A lot of geometry is either flat or happens inside surfaces. The reason there's no shelling (I'm assuming that's what you meant, there are two Offset Surface components in GH) is because (a) it's a very new feature in Rhino and doesn't work too well yet and (b) as a result of that isn't available to plugins.
I believe it’s been helpful for me to have figured this out. I recently completed a GH course at a local Community College and have done a bunch of online tutorials. The first real project I decided to tackle has turned out to be one of the more difficult things to try. It’s the source of the questions I posted. (Thanks for pointing out that they were posted in the wrong spot. I re-posted to the discussions board.)
I just can't seem to figure out how to turn the voronoi into legitimate geometry. I've seen this exact question posted a few times, but it’s never been successfully answered. What I'm showing here is far more angular than I’m hoping for. The mesh is too fine for weaverbird to have much of an effect. And I haven't cracked re-meshing. Btw, in product design, meshes are to be avoided like the plague. Embracing them remains difficult.
As for offsetsurf, in Rhino, if you do an offsetsurf to a solid body, it executes it on all sides creating another neatly trimmed body thats either larger or smaller than the original. This is how every other app I know of works. GH’s offsetsurf creates a bunch of unjoined faces spaced away from the original brep. A common technique for 3D voronois (Yes, I hit the voronoi overuse easter egg) is to find the center of each cell and scale them by this center. If you think about it, this creates a different distance from the face of the scaled cell to the face of the original cell for every face. As I've mentioned, this project is giving me serious headaches.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the feedback, I really do, but I want to be honest and open about my own plans and where they might conflict with your wishes. Grasshopper is being used far beyond the boundaries of what we expected and it's clear that there are major shortcomings that must be addressed before too long. We didn't get it right with the first version, I don't expect we'll get it completely right with the second version but if we can improve upon the -say- five biggest drawbacks (performance, documentation, organisation, plugin management and no mac version) I'll be a happy puppy.
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David Rutten
Thank you for taking the time to reply David. Often we feel that posting such things is send it into the empty ether. I’m very glad that this was not the case.
And thank you for all of the work you've put into GH. If you found any of my input overly harsh or ill-mannered, I apologise. It was not my intent. I'm generally not the ranting sort. If I hadn't intended to provide possibly useful input, I wouldn't have written.
Cheers
Patrick Girgen
Ps. Any pointers on how to get a bit further on the above project would be greatly appreciated.
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