Guru-G

Grasshopper is an awesome plugin for rhino which lets us customize the design using programmatic nodes. It is the best design conceptualization tool that I've found. There are few other similar software's like dynamo for Revit, Para 3d for 3ds max, but they all have their own limitations. But grasshopper is limited to your imagination and a little bit of understanding the plugin itself. Once you get the hand of the user interface and the nodes, you can almost design anything you want. But, often times we might want to compare between alternative options of our own design. So going through each node and changing the values is time taking. So Grasshopper allows you to save the values/state of the nodes  so that you can revert back to them with just a single click. In the following example, I've got a simplistic script for a twisting tower where I want to compare between to alternatives. So I set the values of the 1st alternate and save it at Solution> Save state ,...

The Speckle website(which is still in beta stage) has few examples of how we can use a grasshopper between multiple desktops for collaboration. Note: this website only works in Mozilla firefox properly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKd0t1SehFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPhiMiivWtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDbnBnEloI0

Similar to Section & Elevation tags in Revit, you can insert jump node in grasshopper at 2 locations to switch between those 2 views. In the video, if you jump to " 5:53 " in the timeline, you can view the use of jump node.

DesignScript is a software developed by Autodesk that uses programming language for exploratory design and analysis. It is similar to Grasshopper, except it doesn't have any visual coding (nodes), it's totally a programming based application. The following are the introduction tutorials of Design Script Introduction to DesignScript Editor (IDE) DesignScript tutorial The following Webinar by Autodesk Research gives a brief explanation of  Design Script. DesignScript Webinar

Grasshopper is a great tool for parametric design . You can almost design anything you can think of(keeping the structural parameters aside). Especially using the Attractors- Curve/Point , one can design a flexible parametric object/structure. Louvers have always been planar- vertical/horizontal. Even though non-planar louvers have not been seen in implementation yet, I think it would be a real deal in the coming future. Non-Planar Louvers There was a post by  Kwee How  in his blog explaining "How parametric design contributes to “new” architecture and to us?" He's shown various 3D printed miniature parametric models and parametric louver is one of them. Dynamic Louvers Grasshopper Model Dynamic Louvers 3d Model Tutorial The following tutorial by Christopher McAdams  explains in detail how to design non-planar louvers in grasshopper that can be adjusted using a curve attractor. And he also explains the possible fabrication of these louvers though ...

Grouping & Scribbling in grasshopper can be helpful, especially when your document is filled with hundreds of nodes with wires going all around the screen. Often you might find it difficult to locate the set of nodes you'd like to adjust or alter for your project. So grouping the nodes and annotating the groups would be a nice idea to keep your document organised. Grouping In order to group a set of nodes, you just select them and right click on the screen(not on any of the nodes). You'll find the option to group. You can even name the groups just by right clicking on the group. Although naming the groups would be enough to identify the group. The name bubble of the group will disappear when you zoom too far out. So, the solution to be able to identify the group from a zoomed out fairly far is to add a scribble(with a text height of min 25) in the group. Scribble & Group in Grasshopper Scribble Like the name says, Scribble is just to add some notes f...

Use Mass Addition node to find the sum of all the numbers in a list. Mass Addition Reference  link

1.Change the Default Preview Properties: To change the display settings (Color, Quality, Bump Preview etc...) of the preview in grasshopper, You have to locate the " Document Preview Settings " &  " Preview Mesh Quality " on the top right corner of the grasshopper interface. Preview Mesh Quality Document Preview Settings The Document Preview Settings widgets let you tweak the default color and transparency settings of the grasshopper file. There are three ways of doing it Entering the desired RGB value of the required color Entering the desired values of Hue, Saturation & Value of the requires color Using the color picker to choose any color that's being displayed on the screen You can even choose the color from another window unless and until your focusing window is grasshopper Minimize the Rhino & Grasshopper window such that you are able to view the desired color that is in the other application(ex-Photoshop). Gras...

Emmelyn Chua Pei Min: Advanced Building Technology: Week 6: The Lure of Continuous Skin (Revised) (TE2... : What is parametricism?  Parametric Design Studies For Existing Structural System by ORN8 Parametricism is a style emerged based o...

Grashopper has a wide set of plugins which can increase the wide range of applicability of grashopper  While Grasshopper itself is a plugin for rhino, there are many individual plugins for each of these separately to increase the productivity of their usage. With the increasing usage of computation in building design, it is also important to know that there are plugins which can give us the best possible solutions for a given set of parameters provided by us.Plugins like Ladybug , Honey-bee , Geco , Galapagos (pre-installed in grasshopper) , for Grasshopper & Diva for Rhino etc.., can help us in creating an environmentally-conscious architectural design. Here is a few list of plugins along with video links that I found would be helpful in understanding the usage of these plugins: Galapagos in Grasshopper (Pre-installed) :       In a brief Galapagos is an Evolutionary Problem Solver in grasshopper that tests all the values and gives us the best po...

The following tutorial helps you to divide a Plane surface  with a UV grid and extract the boundary of each child(divided) planes separately. Steps: The desired surface is either created in grasshopper or one of the rhino surfaces is set to a node in grasshopper. The divide node virtually divides the surface into desired parts & the Isotrim(Subsrf) node creates the divisions on the surface. Then all the created divided surfaces are collected into one node called surface(srf) Now its gets complicated, -All the collected surfaces are listed into a List node (list item), where the list is grafted within then list node before being processed in the node This list is now exploded for the edges using Explode node After the explode node has run, the segments within the node should be grafted . Then this grafted explode node is to be connected to a Graft node, where the list should be flattened before it runs through graft node. (not sure why grafting it within ...

This is not so complex/hard take up a single post, but often I tend to forget how to divide a surface into UV grid. It's just a simple 4 steps Set the  Surface  (rhino or grasshopper generated) into the surface node Get the  Divide (Divide Domain 2 )  node to divide the surface(the division wont be visible just yet) Add  Number Sliders  to the U & V nodes of the divide node to adjust the number of divisions according to the requirement Link the surface to the  Subsrf (Isotrim)  node and provide the domain of isotrim node as the result of the divide node You can adjust the number of U & V  divisions using the number slider provided.

One of the best natural examples for a Voronoi is the Wing structure of a dragon fly.Grasshopper can help us to build a shape like this in Rhino. Image Courtesy:  The Pond blog Grasshopper by default has a node for Voronoi, we just have to prepare the necessary information to feed into the node. The following example shows how to create a Voronoi shaped holes in a surface Create a planar  Surface  from rhino or grasshopper Randomly Populate the surface with points using the  Populate 2D  Node Feed the surface and the points into the  Voronoi  node and feed a number slider too to adjust eh radius This forms the required Voronoi structure which you can edit the number of points or radius. To create the holes we need to offset each and every inner portion towards its centre using the  Scale  node We can find the centre of each of the inner portions using Area node I'm not sure why but using the offset command su...

Though in Grasshopper Offset and Scale are two different node functions, when it comes to a planar surface, the results of the both are similar. But, I found the " Scale" node to be effective when you want to loft the resultant curve with another. The following images show the different results of a Voronoi structure that yielded when scale and offset nodes are used. When the Offset node is used When Scale is used