Tag: grasshopper

Grasshopper Primer Third Edition | Foundations

The latest and greatest Grasshopper Primer, the Third Edition, can be downloaded for free from Modelab:

http://modelab.is/grasshopper-primer/

I’ll be assigning readings and example exercises out of this primer for the next month or so.  Check out the updated Syllabus for details, and get your hands on these great resources as soon as possible!

I’ve been using the second edition in every section of Parametrics I’ve taught to date, and we have always struggled with the dated content.  I’m excited to dive in to the latest and greatest from the boys over at Modelab with all of you!

Spring 2014 Parametric Seating Assignment

The first assignment of the Spring semester is available online here.  This assignment, which we’ve done a few times before in this class, asks students to model a precedent seating system in Rhino, and to extend that surface parametrically in Grasshopper.

The assignment, including parts 1 and 2 is also embedded below.  Enjoy:

Parametric Seating Assignment – Fall 2013

The first assignment of the Fall semester is online here.  The assignment asks students to model a precedent seating system in Rhino, and to create an extended design space around the precedent system using Grasshopper.

We’ve done this a few times before in this class, and it has proven to be a good way into some of the concepts and techniques we’ll be developing over the course of the semester.

The published document is also embedded below:

ModeLab video tutorials

Local design studio and learning collective ModeLab has published a series of fantastic tutorial videos for Grasshopper.  These guys have been Grasshopper experts for years and are generous enough to share some of their knowledge on the web for free.

Here is a link to their free ‘Introduction To Grasshopper’ video series.  This series covers most of what we have seen in class so far and is a great resource for sharpening up on the basics.  Highly recommended.

I’ll be posting a few more over the course of the term, but feel free to have a look at all of these at your convenience.  They also introduce scripting in python pretty clearly, and provide a wide cross section of contemporary design knowledge.  They are charging for some of the more advanced content, but  lots of good stuff is available for free.

Parametric Seating Assignment – Spring 2013

The first assignment for the spring courses can be found by following this link.  For this four week assignment, students are asked to accurately model a precedent seating system of their choice and to extend the model parametrically using grasshopper.

We did this assignment once before last summer, and the results were very strong.  The intent of the assignment is to let students focus on the fundamentals of parametric modeling by taking the design work out of the project’s scope.

The assignment is also embedded below:

Firefly + Kangaroo

This is way too awesome not to post:

Firefly Vision tools + Kangaroo Physics from Daniel Piker on Vimeo.

Two grasshopper plugins, Kangaroo physics and Firefly, are used to enable direct interaction with Grasshopper geometry using a webcam.  Can’t wait to see the kinect version.

Found on grasshopper3d.com

GH Workshop 1 recap and additional examples

Since there were quite a few questions during our first GH workshop and we didn’t get through all of the examples, I thought a recap / demo video might be helpful.  The recording below covers the example we did in class, and includes two additional examples that should help you complete the roof structure assignment.

Hopefully this will be helpful for some of you – I know these types of tutorials are very helpful for me when I’m learning new software.  If there are any questions or comments, please post them in the comments.  Good luck with grasshopper!

Grasshopper Resources

There are a wealth of online resources that should be taken advantage of when working with and/or learning Grasshopper.

First and foremost is http://www.grasshopper3d.com/, the project’s homepage.  The site contains a very active forum, links to numerous tutorials and learning materials, and provides the most recent releases of the program itself.  Also check out the always growing list of add-ons, some of which we’ll be using later in the term.  If you have a GH question, this is the place to start.

Second: designreform.net.  There are a bunch of fantastic grasshopper tutorials dating all the way back to when grasshopper was called explicit history.  All tutorials are very high quality and do a great job explaining concepts as well as technique.  This blog is a great resource as it offers tutorials across a wide cross section of parametric and rule based platforms.

Third: The Grasshopper Primer – Second Edition.  This is a comprehensive document that describes, in detail, the basics of the interface all the way up to programming on top of GH.  Although it was written for an older version of GH, most of the material is still very relevant.  I don’t know of another document that provides as much information on as many topics.  If you are looking for an in depth answer to a question, the Primer is often more helpful than the forums.