Add loop component in Grasshopper

Good day community,

I would like to suggest that Grasshopper has a loop component on it's own that will make the itterations internally, without having to use addons like Hoopsnake that require a play button to start calculating. That would make the loop tool more dynamic and easy to use.

Grasshopper is mostly about Data multiplication and it really does need a loop component for more possible geometris outcome.

Thank you

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by emlplsn on November 9, 2015 at 2:41am

It is actually very impressive how far one can avoid using loops in GH with proper use of data trees. The only time I find it impossible to avoid loops is when recursive schemes are involved. Personally, I think the scripting components fill this gap well.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on November 9, 2015 at 3:48am

Would you have a suggestion about how this loop component should look/work?

Permalink Reply by dim gimi on November 9, 2015 at 4:15am

Thank you for your timely response.

I have a suggestion on how it should work. For example, in this script I start with a rectangle and i make constant copies of it so that they: 1) have their middle highest point aligned to curve, 2) they rotate from 1 point of the rectangle and I had to use an addon to do it.

So, the loop component could work like this:

Inputs

Geometry to modify

Procedure as an input that collects data from the procedure as an output

A condition to terminate the loop.

Output

Procedure as an output

Final geometry

The procedure as an input would collect data from the geometry after we have modified it and use it as a new input to start the procedure that the original object have been through over and over again.

Indeed there are a lot of things to do without loop, but it is needed when the result of the next calculation depends on an input that has changed.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on November 12, 2015 at 1:54pm

Dynamo does a lot of this functional programming-style "procedure as input" and it's EXTREMELY confusing, especially to beginners. I can see some of the use cases but I think it causes more trouble than it's worth.

I actually think Anemone's solution generally works quite well - a "Loop in" and "loop out" component that handle "teleporting" the data back from the end of the loop to the beginning again. The critical thing is that these workflows can be used in-line in an existing definition (changing upstream conditions causes them to re-calculate). Anemone does this better than hoopsnake but it's still not foolproof.

Permalink Reply by Andrew Heumann on November 12, 2015 at 1:50pm

Anemone can be made to work nicely for loops without any "play button"

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