Although I took a workshop on Grasshopper back in February, I’m now just starting to apply it to projects at work. I’m having to relearn some of the content from the workshop and reverse engineer from examples I’ve found online. The Director of our studio is comfortable with the program and my coworker, Jeff Vaglio has used it in two major projects. I have learned a lot from them.
So what is Grasshopper? From grasshopper3d.com:
For designers who are exploring new shapes using generative algorithms, Grasshopper® is a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. Unlike RhinoScript, Grasshopper requires no knowledge of programming or scripting, but still allows designers to build form generators from the simple to the awe-inspiring.
The way I understand it, Grasshopper is a parametric modeling program that uses components that reference geometry inside Rhino. The geometry can be as simple as a point and as complex as a twisting surface. A group of components that preform a task or create a design is called a definition and a Grasshopper definition does not exist as geometry until it is “baked”. The cool part is that you don’t loose anything in the definition when you bake it into Rhino. This means one can make changes to a definition, bake, make more changes, bake again, and now there are multiple variations of one design.
on left is the resulting geometry created by the definition on the right
Once the geometry is baked it's static and the definition is also preserved
The definition can then be changed, in this case rotated and scaled
The new definition can then be baked again resulting in a new version
left: geometry in Rhino - right: the definitions in grasshoper
Like any creative or technical tool, I’m looking forward to pushing it’s capabilities. If I’m lucky, and persistent, I’ll hopefully find a new way to use Grasshopper.
