Grasshopper

algorithmic modeling for Rhino

Component reference for GH

Hi all! I am a GH newbie (although a professional programmer) and I needed a full searchable and browsable list of GH components (documentation), which I could not find anywhere. So, to help myself and everybody, I built this GH component reference site by extracting the list of GH components a while ago.

The advantage of such a list is you can find a component when you know what you want, and don't know the terminology that GH uses. For example to delete/remove items from a list, in GH the term is "cull". Patterns are known as "arrays". While these may be common to GH experts, it takes a while to figure out, and a full component list helps you learn these quickly.

I wanted feedback about this site, and to start discussion about docs in general. AFAIK, docs are largely missing in GH, save the "search" function available within the GH editor. What do you all think? Would you find such a website useful? Would you like it if such docs were integrated into the GH website itself? 

Thanks

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Harsh Gupta on May 10, 2016 at 12:18am

That's strange, I downloaded the latest of everything I could find. Oh man, there's a bug in the T-Splines site where they link to an older forum post that releases TS 2.3. Ok, got the latest from the forum. I'll add all your plugin recommendations today.

Permalink Reply by dvdrbls on May 10, 2016 at 1:25am
Permalink Reply by Thomas Helzle on May 7, 2016 at 6:23am

Awesome idea!

I struggle with the terminology a lot since even between Rhino and GH it's often different and each developer ads his/her own idea of what makes sense ;-)

It's also often confusing when people post screenshots of their node flows and have icons active so you start wading through hundreds of components to find the fitting one - image recognition maybe? ;-)

And yeah, documentation is sparse in the best case. Many concepts can only be unravelled through a forum search and many inputs and outputs leave me baffled or need extensive trial and error to figure out, since the description is like: "Plumpidum: here you set the amount of Plumpidum"... Yeah, right... ;-)

Also, some extensions come up with their own kinds of meshes or particles etc. that do not directly relate to anything else and add to the confusion.

So yeah, anything helping with that situation is extremely welcome and should basically be part of the GH installation and/or website.

Cheers,

Tom

Permalink Reply by Harsh Gupta on May 7, 2016 at 11:49pm

Hi Tom. Right now my site is a basic HTML thingy, but I could add a method of editing / improving the page (like a wiki) and/or a method of commenting. Do you think such a thing would be useful for people to share wisdom about a specific component and thereby improve the docs?

Permalink Reply by Thomas Helzle on May 8, 2016 at 4:40pm

I guess it depends mainly if your site is well maintained for years to come and if you can get people to really use it and add value.

Maybe talk to the GH developers and McNeel if they would be interested in cooperating with you or what their plans are for proper docs?

Something should be done about it, but maybe you can join forces?

Would be sad if your time would be wasted in case McNeel already has something cooking...

Cheers,

Tom

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on May 9, 2016 at 2:56am

The forum already handles most plug-in details and I want your site featured here prominently, but actually dread there being two places to search in order to get answers, or two sites to have to post my own notes to about a component.

Permalink Reply by Thomas Helzle on May 9, 2016 at 5:11am

Exactly.

Permalink Reply by Harsh Gupta on May 10, 2016 at 12:19am

Perhaps if David Rutten can link my site up with help.grasshopper3d.com and add a tab for it in the main menu, it would improve discoverability. I could continue hosting it or hand it over to David.

And if you can show me a way to fetch forum posts, I could integrate it into my site. So when you click on the docs for a certain component, I could run a GH forum search automatically, and display the matching results, thereby featuring relevant wisdom without creating duplicate entries in my database. You'll need to show me how to run a forum search to get relevant posts about a certain component, or a certain addon.

Permalink Reply by 未知 on May 10, 2016 at 8:11am

Permalink Reply by Harsh Gupta on May 11, 2016 at 3:30am

That looks nice. Auto translated. Are you trying to point to an error in the docs?

Permalink Reply by Scott Davidson on May 10, 2016 at 12:41pm

I added a new page to the Grasshopper site: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/page/component-reference

The only way to get there at this time is the link above. Please review the layout. Once we get it working well, we can find a place on the website to access it.

Permalink Reply by Harsh Gupta on May 11, 2016 at 10:36am

Thanks for that. However I think the IFrame is unnecessary. You might want to check out my site again. I've cloned the CSS for the menubar and footer, and integrated my content nicely with the GH "site template". Can you simply add a Ning tab that redirects to an external URL?

Also, if someone in the GH Team could setup a CNAME/A record for "help.grasshopper.com" to point to my hosting IP which is "192.30.252.153" and "192.30.252.154", my free .TK domain name would be unnecessary.

If you can do these 2 things, the docs "tab" would be integrated seamlessly into the GH website experience and I can keep updating it easily from my end.

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