sophy though, I have a rudimentary grasp of the Ancient Greeks and modern schools of thought such as Existentialism and Pragmatism, but there is certainly no depth in my understanding. However here the same rule applies. You can quote philosophy all you want, but unless you understand that which you're channelling you can be -at best- accidentally correct.
According to you, these are all vital characteristics:
Aesthetic judgement
Intuition about spatial effectiveness
Knowledge of construction materials & assembly systems
Consideration of performance-driven design properties
Mad synthesizing skillz
[1] and [2] are pretty much worthless, especially when we're dealing with students. Aesthetic judgement is not something that can be wrong or right. You can hone your aesthetic skills but you cannot cultivate better tastes. Intuition is also problematic. It's basically a stand-in for argumentation. Instead of saying "these buildings have to have 20 meters apart because of wind/sound/human perception/human psychology/light/shadow/etc. etc" is a far stronger statement than "these buildings have to have 20 meters apart because of my feelings". Who are you to be trusted? If you have a long and distinguished career backing you up, maybe your opinions carry some weight, but until that point you'd better be prepared to justify your decisions with cold hard logic and data.
[3] is certainly important for certain jobs in construction, but it can be argued that implementation details are not necessarily central to a design. One can design a good computer interface without having to be able to program, and certainly without being familiar with all the idiosyncrasies of a particular programming language. Conversely, one can design an excellent space without knowing exactly how strong certain atomic bonds are. If what you design is physically impossible, then obviously something has to change, but it doesn't mean that the design as an abstract idea was bad. Of course on the other hand one can argue that designing impossible things is not doing anyone any favours. I'm not exactly certain where I stand on this issue, probably comfortably in the middle; YES, students need to learn about what can be build in the physical world, but NO that is not part of design training.
I'm not quite sure what [4] means.
[5] is true for a lot of professions, not just Architects. I would concede that architects probably have more to take into account than most designers and that it is indeed an important skill to have.
I would say that -especially for students, who have little experience- an incredibly important skill to be able to ask yourself "why am I doing this?" about pretty much every decision you make. Basically you need to get very comfortable applying the Socratic method to everything you do.
--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Tirol, Austria…
Added by David Rutten at 11:03am on August 14, 2013
ctor. I do not dispose of any IGH_Goo instances, mostly because I have no idea when an instance is truly no longer needed. If any of your fields need to be disposed, you may have to implement a destructor, but I have no experience with this.
2) should I pass those classes to other parameters by DA(0, MotherClass.Duplicate?) or it is already there by GH_Goo ?
IGH_Goo is not duplicated by default. If you use DA.GetData() and ask for IGH_Goo types, you'll get a reference to the same instance as exists. Thus, if you take in an instance of your type, modify and output it, you should duplicate it yourself. But you only need to do this if you change the state of an instance.
MyGooType data = null;
if (!DA.GetData(0, ref data)) return;
data = data.Duplicate() as MyGooType;
data.Property = newValue;
DA.SetData(0, data);
3) should I create ChildClass and MotherClass in SolveInstance, or create it once as a component's field and then change theirs properties and pass it to DA (as duplicate ?)....
It's almost always better to use variables with the lowest possible scope. So method variables are preferred to class variables, class variables are preferred to static variables.
4) if I create those classes in SolveInstance, is it necessary to Dispose them there ?
NO! Do not dispose of instances that are passed on to output parameters. Disposing objects typically makes them invalid, so if you share instances with anyone else, you should not dispose them or the other code may well crash. However I don't think your types need to be disposable so this is a moot point now.
In general, if you're dealing with disposable types, and the instances aren't shared, then you dispose them as quickly as possible. But if they are shared it's a lot more complicated.
5) finally - maybe it would be better if MotherClass inherits the ChildClass ?
Maybe. Not necessarily. Depends on the classes. …
Added by David Rutten at 12:08pm on December 31, 2014
size component supported only ground PV panels and angled roof PV panels.
Download the newest PV SWH system size component from here (Click on "View Raw" to download it. Then move the downloaded .ghuser file to File->Special Folders->User Objects Folder, an confirm to overwrite it with previously located one).
Just a few opinions on the project you are currently working on:This kind of fixed, non-transparent (overhang) PV panels attached to a building facade are vert convenient for locations with higher latitudes.The reason for this is because they (fixed overhang PV panels) are dimensioned according to the sun position at summer solstice. Elevation angles on summer solstice at higher latitude locations are lower, than those of lower latitude locations.Due to Incheon's low latitude (37), you will get rather short length of the PV panels* : less than 10 centimeters (0.097 meters in the attached .gh file below). As you have mentioned, Galapagos needs to be used too.I will just mention some of the good and bad ways in which the upper issue could be somewhat avoided:1) Increasing the vertical distance between PV panels (PV panels appear above every second window).2) Increase the tilt angle. This will increase the length of PV panels also, but will decrease the final annual AC energy output.An example of this solution has been applied at FKI building in Seoul (latitude: 37N):I already did some tests (with tilt angles: 40, 45, 55) and this does not seem like a good solution, though.3) Shrinking the "sun window" by using the minimalSpacingPeriod_ input. In Photovoltaics, a planner is suppose to make the 9h to 15h part of the sun window free of any obstructions. If you try to decrease the "sun window" to 10 to 14h, the length of your PV panels will increase. You can try to experiment a little bit with this (set your minimalSpacingPeriod_ to 21th of June 10 to 14hours). In general, shrinking the sun window on summer solstice is not a good principle during planning.4) Using tracking PV panels, not fixed ones. But Ladybug Photovoltaics components do not support this kind of PV systems. They only support fixed ones.I would personally go with the first option. You can also experiment with the second and third one.Comment back if you have any other questions.-----------------------* By "length of the PV panels" I mean the: tiltedArrayHeight_ input of the PV SWH system size component.…
On the other hand ... well ... we can pretend that this could be some sort of add-on dedicated for broken pieces, (and nerves if loops = a big number) he he.
Anyway:
1. If you enable the history (the yellow things) you can watch the recursion working: get a donor box and "slice" it in 2 (either via an "orthogonal" plane [the fast boxes] or a random one [the slow breps]). Then get each one and repeat until the desired "depth" of "slices" is achieved (the loops, that is). Pure recursion in terms of programming (a function does something, yields results and then calls itself to further process each result).
Double click on the C# to see the code (but don't change anything). For the record this is the function that does the main job (spot the fact that if it's not terminated it calls itself [last line]):
2. The x, xy, xyz options restrict the random plane (actually in the boxes case there's another technique used (Intervals) but never mind). For instance (case random breps) the slicing plane is defined at the brep center and using a random direction:
Vector3d dir = new Vector3d(rand.NextDouble(-1,1), rand.NextDouble(-1,1), rand.NextDouble(-1,1));
If the 3rd value is 0 then the plane's YAxis is parallel to Plane.WorldXY.ZAxis.
3. Now if the "slicing" thing was a random polyline at a random plane the pieces could be far more "elaborated" (and/or "naturally looking") ... but the thing with programming is to know(?) where/when to stop.
4. This approach could use any donor Brep (a blob for instance) or a Brep List. Notify if you want to add such an option.
5. Added some lines more for an option that allows to sample the pieces (due to the last loop) in an automated flat "layout" (it's a bit more complex than it appears on first sight).
6. The x,y restriction mode now affects the random slices as well. See what I mean:
and the same restriction using boxes:
Truth is that all that freaky stuff could be helpful for you if you had serious plans to learn C# (not something achievable without pain and tears aplenty).
best…
e point in each pair that has the lowest Z value (then later the highest Z)... The problem is the intersections are not returned sorted by Z, sometimes the lower point is first in the list, sometimes last. So I need to sort those pairs of points by Z value.I noticed the sort points component does not have any inputs for sort criteria... RhinoScript SortPoints allows you to sort by:
blnOrder
Optional. Number. The component sort order, where:
Value
Component Sort Order
0 (default)
X, Y, Z
1
X, Z, Y
2
Y, X, Z
3
Y, Z, X
4
Z, X, Y
5
Z, Y, X
Will we get something like this in GH? For now I think I can manage to analyze the Z for each and re-order the points, but a more comprehensive point sorting tool might be nice... no? Or did I miss something obvious? --Thx, --Mitch…
works joyfully if you want to change parameters and generate screen captures and planning to do a lot of them. You can of course generate the file name dynamically referring to the parameters you gave to the script, so that you have meaningful file names.
The example below will generate two captures at J:\Temp\001_top,jpg and J:\Temp\001_front,jpg both at 600X600 px in ghosted mode.
The instructions are as follows: (if you open the VB code by double clicking you will see it)
' Note1: The script is actually calling Rhino commands.
' Note2: Remember you have to draw something and is selectable for the script to function. The script uses _SelAll then _Zoom _Selected
' Note3: After you toggle blnSave to True, a new viewport will popup, be patient while Rhino work, and wait for that viewport to disappear befor clicking on anything.
' Note4: The component is not stable if you try to mouse click on anywhere while the saving process is running. Some stupid move may crash your programme, save RH and GH files before using this component.
' FileName : String Input = Supply with the path and file name without ".jpg" extension : e.g.: "C:\Temp\001" (Without the quotes)
' blnSave : Boolean Input = Saves when toggles to True (Remember to toggle back to False after use, otherwise the script will re-run itself during next update)
' Resolution_width : Integer Input = Resolution for the captured image
' Resolution_height : Integer Input = well...
' TopYea : Boolean Input = Toggles if the Top View is captured (Default is False if not connected)
' FrontYea : Boolean Input = Toggles if the Front View is captured (Default is False if not connected)
' ...Yea : Boolean Input = Toggles if the corresponding View is captured (Default is False if not connected)
' DisplayMode : Integer Input(0-4) = Sets the display Mode 0:Shaded 1:Wireframe 2:Rendered 3:Ghosted 4:XRay Default:Shaded
I remember I took some code from somewhere but I forgot exactly the source, (if someone could remind me I would love to cite) I rewrite most of them though. But the attribution header in the code still remains there and now it seems a bit interesting to see the family tree:
'////// Marc Hoppermann ///////////tweaked by Damien Almor ///////rewritten for curves by to]///////adapted by u]...www.utos.blogspot.com ///readapted by Victor Leung @ www.dreamationworks.com
Visit my blog if you have time: www.dreamationworks.com…
se (like in nature). the length of the sticks shall be controlled by the brightnessvalues of a picture. so the bend have to be controlled, too.
now we have several problems:
1. how can i map a hexgrid on a curved surface?
2. how can i adapt the grid to the dimensions of the surface (no overlap, no gaps to the bound)?
3. important
: to create the curved sticks, we use points on a line and we move some of them and then we want to connect the right points via interpolated curve to create each curved stick. now the problem is that the points have to been filtered in the right way. we know that we have to filter each list of points to the index values of the points. the number of index values is the number of hexgrid rows, so there are a lot and we can't use a list item for each one. it could be hundreds.
is there any opportunity to sort a list after the index values (first every index=0, then index=1, ...n)?
or is there any component which does a group of operations for n-times (n is the flexible number of index values) ?
4. how can i control the length and bend of the sticks via the brightnessvalues of a picture?
please help us. thanks.
german version:
In einem hexagonalen Raster soll sich senkrecht zu Oberfläche ein Stab im Mittelpunkt jedes Sechsecks befinden. Dieser soll sich ab einem gewissen (festgelegten) Punkt Richtung Boden biegen. Zusätzlich wird die Länge des Stabes zum Beispiel durch die Information eines Bildes gesteuert, so dass auch die Biegung, je nach Länge, geregelt werden muss.
Wir haben ein Hexagonales Grid (HexGrid) erzeugt und in jeden Mittelpunkt eine Linie senkrecht zum Grid erzeugt, aus der wir uns Punkte mit CurvePoint ausgeben lassen. Der letzte ist verschoben, um eine Biegung zu simulieren. Um die Punkte zu einer interpolierten Kurve zu verbinden, müssen sie nach dem Index sortiert werden. Gibt es eine andere Möglichkeit, als jeden einzelnen Indexwert über ein ListItem herauszufiltern (Da die Rasterung flexibel einstellbar sein soll, entstehen n Indexwerte)? Oder kann man eine Liste nach den Indexwerten, also nicht nach den Punkten, sortieren?
Und wie kann man über Bildhelligkeitswerte die Länge der Stäbe und damit auch die Biegung steuern (ein kurzer Stab biegt sich weniger als ein langer Stab)?
Gibt es die Möglichkeit ein hexagonales Raster auf eine gekrümmte Fläche zu mappen?
Und wie passt man ein solches Raster (HexGrid) in eine Fläche mit definierten Maßen ein, ohne dass das Raster an den Rändern übersteht oder die Fläche nicht vollkommen ausfüllt?
danke.…
Added by doro hamann at 7:34am on December 20, 2011
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…
ng is deciding how and where to store your data. If you're writing textual code using any one of a huge number of programming languages there are a lot of different options, each with its own benefits and drawbacks. Sometimes you just need to store a single data point. At other times you may need a list of exactly one hundred data points. At other times still circumstances may demand a list of a variable number of data points.
In programming jargon, lists and arrays are typically used to store an ordered collection of data points, where each item is directly accessible. Bags and hash sets are examples of unordered data storage. These storage mechanisms do not have a concept of which data comes first and which next, but they are much better at searching the data set for specific values. Stacks and queues are ordered data structures where only the youngest or oldest data points are accessible respectively. These are popular structures for code designed to create and execute schedules. Linked lists are chains of consecutive data points, where each point knows only about its direct neighbours. As a result, it's a lot of work to find the one-millionth point in a linked list, but it's incredibly efficient to insert or remove points from the middle of the chain. Dictionaries store data in the form of key-value pairs, allowing one to index complicated data points using simple lookup codes.
The above is a just a small sampling of popular data storage mechanisms, there are many, many others. From multidimensional arrays to SQL databases. From readonly collections to concurrent k-dTrees. It takes a fair amount of knowledge and practice to be able to navigate this bewildering sea of options and pick the best suited storage mechanism for any particular problem. We did not wish to confront our users with this plethora of programmatic principles, and instead decided to offer only a single data storage mechanism.*
Data storage in Grasshopper
In order to see what mechanism would be optimal for Grasshopper, it is necessary to first list the different possible ways in which components may wish to access and store data, and also how families of data points flow through a Grasshopper network, often acquiring more complexity over time.
A lot of components operate on individual values and also output individual values as results. This is the simplest category, let's call it 1:1 (pronounced as "one to one", indicating a mapping from single inputs to single outputs). Two examples of 1:1 components are Subtraction and Construct Point. Subtraction takes two arguments on the left (A and B), and outputs the difference (A-B) to the right. Even when the component is called upon to calculate the difference between two collections of 12 million values each, at any one time it only cares about three values; A, B and the difference between the two. Similarly, Construct Point takes three separate numbers as input arguments and combines them to form a single xyz point.
Another common category of components create lists of data from single input values. We'll refer to these components as 1:N. Range and Divide Curve are oft used examples in this category. Range takes a single numeric domain and a single integer, but it outputs a list of numbers that divide the domain into the specified number of steps. Similarly, Divide Curve requires a single curve and a division count, but it outputs several lists of data, where the length of each list is a function of the division count.
The opposite behaviour also occurs. Common N:1 components are Polyline and Loft, both of which consume a list of points and curves respectively, yet output only a single curve or surface.
Lastly (in the list category), N:N components are also available. A fair number of components operate on lists of data and also output lists of data. Sort and Reverse List are examples of N:N components you will almost certainly encounter when using Grasshopper. It is true that N:N components mostly fall into the data management category, in the sense that they are mostly employed to change the way data is stored, rather than to create entirely new data, but they are common and important nonetheless.
A rare few components are even more complex than 1:N, N:1, or N:N, in that they are not content to operate on or output single lists of data points. The Divide Surface and Square Grid components want to output not just lists of points, but several lists of points, each of which represents a single row or column in a grid. We can refer to these components as 1:N' or N':1 or N:N' or ... depending on how the inputs and outputs are defined.
The above listing of data mapping categories encapsulate all components that ship with Grasshopper, though they do not necessarily minister to all imaginable mappings. However in the spirit of getting on with the software it was decided that a data structure that could handle individual values, lists of values, and lists of lists of values would solve at least 99% of the then existing problems and was thus considered to be a 'good thing'.
Data storage as the outcome of a process
If the problems of 1:N' mappings only occurred in those few components to do with grids, it would probably not warrant support for lists-of-lists in the core data structure. However, 1:N' or N:N' mappings can be the result of the concatenation of two or more 1:N components. Consider the following case: A collection of three polysurfaces (a box, a capped cylinder, and a triangular prism) is imported from Rhino into Grasshopper. The shapes are all exploded into their separate faces, resulting in 6 faces for the box, 3 for the cylinder, and 5 for the prism. Across each face, a collection of isocurves is drawn, resembling a hatching. Ultimately, each isocurve is divided into equally spaced points.
This is not an unreasonably elaborate case, but it already shows how shockingly quickly layers of complexity are introduced into the data as it flows from the left to the right side of the network.
It's no good ending up with a single huge list containing all the points. The data structure we use must be detailed enough to allow us to select from it any logical subset. This means that the ultimate data structure must contain a record of all the mappings that were applied from start to finish. It must be possible to select all the points that are associated with the second polysurface, but not the first or third. It must also be possible to select all points that are associated with the first face of each polysurface, but not any subsequent faces. Or a selection which includes only the fourth point of each division and no others.
The only way such selection sets can be defined, is if the data structure contains a record of the "history" of each data point. I.e. for every point we must be able to figure out which original shape it came from (the cube, the cylinder or the prism), which of the exploded faces it is associated with, which isocurve on that face was involved and the index of the point within the curve division family.
A flexible mechanism for variable history records.
The storage constraints mentioned so far (to wit, the requirement of storing individual values, lists of values, and lists of lists of values), combined with the relational constraints (to wit, the ability to measure the relatedness of various lists within the entire collection) lead us to Data Trees. The data structure we chose is certainly not the only imaginable solution to this problem, and due to its terse notation can appear fairly obtuse to the untrained eye. However since data trees only employ non-negative integers to identify both lists and items within lists, the structure is very amenable to simple arithmetic operations, which makes the structure very pliable from an algorithmic point of view.
A data tree is an ordered collection of lists. Each list is associated with a path, which serves as the identifier of that list. This means that two lists in the same tree cannot have the same path. A path is a collection of one or more non-negative integers. Path notation employs curly brackets and semi-colons as separators. The simplest path contains only the number zero and is written as: {0}. More complicated paths containing more elements are written as: {2;4;6}. Just as a path identifies a list within the tree, an index identifies a data point within a list. An index is always a single, non-negative integer. Indices are written inside square brackets and appended to path notation, in order to fully identify a single piece of data within an entire data tree: {2,4,6}[10].
Since both path elements and indices are zero-based (we start counting at zero, not one), there is a slight disconnect between the ordinality and the cardinality of numbers within data trees. The first element equals index 0, the second element can be found at index 1, the third element maps to index 2, and so on and so forth. This means that the "Eleventh point of the seventh isocurve of the fifth face of the third polysurface" will be written as {2;4;6}[10]. The first path element corresponds with the oldest mapping that occurred within the file, and each subsequent element represents a more recent operation. In this sense the path elements can be likened to taxonomic identifiers. The species {Animalia;Mammalia;Hominidea;Homo} and {Animalia;Mammalia;Hominidea;Pan} are more closely related to each other than to {Animalia;Mammalia; Cervidea;Rangifer}** because they share more codes at the start of their classification. Similarly, the paths {2;4;4} and {2;4;6} are more closely related to each other than they are to {2;3;5}.
The messy reality of data trees.
Although you may agree with me that in theory the data tree approach is solid, you may still get frustrated at the rate at which data trees grow more complex. Often Grasshopper will choose to add additional elements to the paths in a tree where none in fact is needed, resulting in paths that all share a lot of zeroes in certain places. For example a data tree might contain the paths:
{0;0;0;0;0}
{0;0;0;0;1}
{0;0;0;0;2}
{0;0;0;0;3}
{0;0;1;0;0}
{0;0;1;0;1}
{0;0;1;0;2}
{0;0;1;0;3}
instead of the far more economical:
{0;0}
{0;1}
{0;2}
{0;3}
{1;0}
{1;1}
{1;2}
{1;3}
The reason all these zeroes are added is because we value consistency over economics. It doesn't matter whether a component actually outputs more than one list, if the component belongs to the 1:N, 1:N', or N:N' groups, it will always add an extra integer to all the paths, because some day in the future, when the inputs change, it may need that extra integer to keep its lists untangled. We feel it's bad behaviour for the topology of a data tree to be subject to the topical values in that tree. Any component which relies on a specific topology will no longer work when that topology changes, and that should happen as seldom as possible.
Conclusion
Although data trees can be difficult to work with and probably cause more confusion than any other part of Grasshopper, they seem to work well in the majority of cases and we haven't been able to come up with a better solution. That's not to say we never will, but data trees are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
* This is not something we hit on immediately. The very first versions of Grasshopper only allowed for the storage of a single data point per parameter, making operations like [Loft] or [Divide Curve] impossible. Later versions allowed for a single list per parameter, which was still insufficient for all but the most simple algorithms.
** I'm skipping a lot of taxonometric classifications here to keep it simple.…
Added by David Rutten at 2:22pm on January 20, 2015