5 Things You Didn't Know You Can Do With Rhino Grasshopper!

hello everyone welcome back to our channel my name is edwin hernandez lead parametric designer at check diver in today's video we will look at the five things you didn't know you can do with grasshopper and shape diver but before we get started please remember to subscribe and to like this video as it really helps our channel and if you haven't done so already follow us in all of our social media channels if you want to find out more about what you can do with shape diaper please make sure to visit our website and remember that all relevant links and files mentioned in this video tutorial will be available down in the description of this video so let's get started so the first thing is create parametric images and textures for that we use the squid plugin shape diaper edition and with this plugin you are able to create images from geometry that you create in grasshopper from other images from text etc etc for that we just need this component this component is the squid component and this component requires us input a rectangle which is our canvas where we will create our image then a set of instructions which are found in the script plugin in the top in the set of instructions then to define pixels per unit so every unit in grasshopper is one pixel in our image if we put this to 10 that means we will have 10 pixels per unit in grasshopper and finally enable or disable anti-aliasing down here we have an example where we created a bitmap a parametric image through a rectangle which is 300 by 300 units of size so 300 pixels by 300 pixels then we populated that rectangle with some points and with some circles which have random radiuses then with those circles we can use one of the instructions that the squid provides is the draw instructions and what this will do is draw a circle in our image with a filling in this case the filling is a color and this color is also generated by some random points and some gradient then we have another instruction which is to clear our canvas so to make our canvas completely white in this case we can change also this color and finally we have another instruction which saves our image in our computer and here we input all of these instructions inside the squid component which will generate a bitmap an image that will be saved in our computer so if we change the parameters of this image so for example if we change the amount of points that this image has and then we check the folder where we are saving our file then we will see here the final result of our image so every change that we do in grasshopper will affect our bitmap in our saved image now something that you may don't know is that these images can be also used as textures for your objects so for example here we are using just a symbol plane and applying this bitmap that we created here a parametric image into our texture input in the shape diver material component this then gets applied into our geometry via our shape diver display geometry component but what happens if instead of a simple plane a simple mesh plane we use a sphere for example then our image our parametric image will get projected into our sphere or into any other geometry that we apply this texture to so if we check the perspective view we will see our sphere with the applied texture you can also download that image in the cloud via shape diver by using our ship diver export download component so that any user around the world can download also this image via the cloud application let's continue with the second thing you can do with grasshopper and shape diver and this is create pdfs so in the squid plugin we have added a new squid component called the squid pdf which will use the same instructions that you can use with the normal squid for creating bitmaps images but instead create a pdf with vector graphics not with pixels additionally there are other components in the shape diaper plugin in the pdf section which allow you to merge pdf pages if you want to have several pages in the same document you can define a page size split pdfs as well and of course save them here locally in your computer so in this definition we have created our page size which is a4 and with this page size we have position a rectangle which will contain the logo of our pdf page this logo can be applied in the pdf thanks to this component which is the image component in the instructions in the squid plugin then here we have several examples so for example the shape diaper logo the puma logo and the instagram logo then on the other side we have a ring as a beera and this ring we want to draw it as a 2d drawing in our pdf to do that we are using this component that comes in grasshopper which is called that make to the component which will create the cures for our ring based on a camera position so this camera position is based on our bounding box the ring bounding box but this bounding box is 45 degrees looking at our ring in this way we can get our camera position then we create the make 2d and we have our ring as curves which then we can draw via the draw component of the squid plugin then we merge all of these instructions and then we input them in the squid pdf component we also input them here in the normal squid component just to be able to preview this pdf in our viewport in our viewer so as you can see the same instructions can be used to create a bitmap an image and to create a pdf then via the shift diver export download component you can make this pdf available when you upload this as a cloud application in shape diver or you can also download directly here in the computer the file by using this component called the grid pdf which is in the shape diver plugin in the pdf section here you just have to give a file path and if we check this folder here you can see the result of our pdf so of course any change that is made in grasshopper will get reflected in the resulting pdf and here there is other examples where you can see how complex these pdfs can get so for example here we have some elevations and floor plans of a garden shed and a list of materials to build this garden shape you could also create some manufacturing drawings for example where you can show how to cut for example this piece of glass this is for a shower or you could even create a summary where you can show the users what is the summary of what they have selected so for example here we have a isometric view created with the make to the component of grasshopper and a floor plan of this shower some description of what was selected for this product and at the end a final result of the cost of this shower some disclaimers and some information all of these created automatically via grasshopper let's go now to the third thing you can do with grasshopper and shape diver and that is to convert images into curves so the first method to do so is to first of all import the image as a bitmap type via our shape diver image input component then with this bitmap you can convert that bitmap into a mesh with the shapediver image to mesh component so here we have just the bitmap as an image but then we convert that bitmap into a mesh if we go ctrl m we will be able to see all the quads in this mesh so each pixel in the image is one of these quads in our mesh and then with weaver bird we take just the naked boundary of this mesh so all the outside of our mesh the problem of this method is that as you can see here the curve is not very smooth it's not very clean and that's because of course the mesh is a set of pixels so a set of quads and that's why we get these very sharp edges in our curve however now in shape diver we support this component called rooster which is way more efficient when converting bitmaps into curves so instead of using here these two methods we will just use rooster plugin so if we input this bitmap into the bitmap input then that will give us a clean curve so if we zoom in we can see that it's a very clean cue and for that of course we have some settings that we are not going to go deep into right now and as output we have the boundary of our bitmap of our image you have of course the curves but these curves are separated into branches because each of these branches represent a color in our colors list output so that you can filter the cures by color now you may ask what is the point of getting the curves of an image and the answers are limitless because now that we have the curves of this image now we can do operations in this image curves as we would do with any other geometry so for example here if we disconnect this we will see that we have a pattern that is created with the traditional grasshopper component of boronoid and then here we have some parameters like for example the number of points so we can see how the pattern changes depending on that but this is not very interesting we don't have really a soul in this design but our soul here is our bitmap our image as curves if we connect this bitmap here in our rooster component then our pattern adapts to these image curves so now we have a pattern that is customized a pattern where you can put any image that you want and the pattern will adapt to this image let's go for the fourth thing which is importing dxf files so thanks to our component shape diver geometry input you can import geometry inside your definition this geometry can be either in dxf format or ovj format via the excel file you can send geometry information to the grasshopper definition it can be either meshes or curves but the main feature here is that you can import layers and colors of these objects that come from the dxf so for example here we have a rough floor plan of a building where we have columns in red color beams in yellow color and walls in black color and additionally we have two buildings separated by layers so building one and building two so if we turn off building two is the circular building i'm building one is the rectangular building we can then import this dxf so here i have the file path component which reference the dxf file that i exported from this example and as output here we get just colors however with the third party plugin fab tools there is a component called get user data here in utils get user data and this component will give us here in the values also the layers and the colors so the key here is sd of shape diaper layer and shape diaper color so that's how we are storing the information of this dxf file and the value is the corresponding layer and the corresponding color now here i'm just using this value list to sort between building one and building two so i just use this match text and remove from my curves the building that i don't want to display so here we see all of the cures but now here we see just the building that we have selected so if i go building one and then if i go building two then it shows me the circular one but additionally to this we have applied some colors to our geometry so we have the red the black and the yellow here and in this way i can filter the information and get with the red all of my columns with the black all of my walls and with the yellow all of my beams and now that we have our geometry filtered now we can apply different operations to this particular geometry so for example here for the beams we have applied a offset to create some thickness in our beams we have created a boundary surface and then extrude them and then we have moved them up based on the column's height so here we have a parameter called columns height so we check that in the 3d in the perspective we can see our beams now as a 3d object now the operation for the walls is different where we are selecting our walls extruding them and then creating an offset so that we give some thickness to our walls and finally we have the columns where we are also creating a boundary surface and we are extruding them based on our column height and with that we get columns walls and beams as a 3d object so we went from a complete base dxf file to a 3d object so if we change from building two to building one we can see how we can automatically convert a floor plan of a building into an r23 model based on some rules applied to the layers and to the colors of a simple dxf file if you upload this definition to the shape diver platform this component the shape type geometry input will create an access for any user in the platform to upload their own dxf file so now anyone around the world can use this application and convert their floor plans into 3d buildings automatically and finally the fifth thing you can do with grasshopper and shape diver is to export dxf files but the main use case to export these dxf files is for cnc or laser cutting so in this example we have a rectangle which gets populated by some point to generate a paranoid and then we have also a surface which is controlled by four points we have here in the parameters two control points that can be changed the high corner one and the high corner two and we use this surface to project the boronoid curves into this surface and then we create some polylines from these curves then here is when we start using the open nest third party plugin openness is the plugin that allows us to create very complex nesting operations here in grasshopper so to begin with we are using the project component and this component will make our polylines planar and give us the plane where now the polyline leaves and then now our polylines are planar we can put them in the x y plane lay them down in the x y plane so that they can then be nested then here we have the openness component which has us input the geometry and the sheet of material where our geometry should be positioned so this is the material size that we have for our cnc or laser machine and openness makes the hard work of positioning all of the pieces of our geometry inside the sheets of material in the most optimized way now this is enough to export a dxf file however with shape diaper components you are able to also add metadata inside your objects so for example here we are using the shape diver properties export and with this we are setting the layers and the colors for our objects so for example here we are taking all of our sheets and we are putting them in the layer sheet and with a red color but on the other hand we have all of our geometry so the actual polylines and we are applying a layer called nested curves and a color which is black then with the shaded set properties component you are able to attach this data in the geometry and when this geometry gets exported via a cloud application then all of our geometry will be positioned in the correct layer and with the correct color finally we can also add other kind of information into our dxf so not just curves but also for example in this case we have linear dimensions so this is created thanks to fab tools which here at the beginning has an annotation stop where you can create linear dimensions or angular dimensions diameter dimensions etc and these will actually be exported as real dimensions recognized by a dxf file so that when we export this in our cloud application our dxfs will have dimensions that can be recognized by programs like autocad or of course rhino and that's all for today i hope that at least one of these five things that we learned today are going to be useful for you to use in your grasshopper definitions and if you want to know more in depth about one of these subjects please let us know in the comments so that we can create a dedicated video about such particular subject finally please don't forget to like this video and to subscribe and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: ShapeDiver

Views: 5,448

Rating: 4.9793816 out of 5

Keywords: parametric design, grasshopper, rhinoceros3d, rooster, shapediver, shapedriver, shape diver

Id: vsyQmQ7hI9o

Length: 19min 34sec (1174 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2020