Blocks, Dimensions and Annotations using Elefront

For those of you who are not frequently visiting food4rhino, I would like to introduce you to Elefront.

Originally Elefront was developed to enhance the Grasshopper workflow by means of assigning user defined attributes to geometry when baking to Rhino. This is a core functionality that is still the most important feature of the suite. However, the plugin has developed far beyond that and at the time of writing, includes a full set of tools to deal with dimensions, annotations and blocks.

The suite enables you to create a full fledged BIM model, including documentation and drawing generation.

You should definitely check it out at:

http://www.food4rhino.com/project/elefront?ufh

Example files and video's can be found here:

http://www.elefront.info/

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cochin baptiste on December 11, 2014 at 6:44am

Hi Ramon,

Firstly, I'd like to thank you a lot for this very helpful plugin which is very easy to use and extends GH functionnalities.

Recently I tried to use the "Insert Linked Block" component in order to pick blocks in a selected folder and orient them toward points in my Rhino document.

It seems that GH handles the block object, indeed a crossed rectangle is drawn in my Rhino document where it is inserted. But when I use the Elefront Bake Component, nothing appears in my Rhino document, neither in the block manager.

Is there any particular way to use this component in this case ?

Thanks for your help.

Baptiste

Permalink Reply by Cochin baptiste on December 11, 2014 at 7:21am

Hi,

After investigating a bit, I noticed that error messages appears in the Rhino doc when I click on the bake component.

"Commande inconnue: SelNone
"Commande inconnue: SelLast
"Commande inconnue: Delete

I am using a French version of Rhino (Commande inconnue = Unknown command), is it possible that few functions might need to be translated ? or to be preceded by this character "_"?

Permalink Reply by Cochin baptiste on December 11, 2014 at 7:27am

Here is a picture for visual explanation...

Attachments:

Test Block.JPG, 71 KB

Permalink Reply by Ramon van der Heijden on December 11, 2014 at 7:36am

Hi Baptiste. It seems that you're right. The commands should have been preceded with a dash.
I'll see if I have time to fix that.

Best regards,

Ramon

Permalink Reply by Cochin baptiste on December 11, 2014 at 7:43am

Thanks

Permalink Reply by Pieter H. on January 19, 2015 at 3:20pm

Hi Ramon,

Quick question: where can we download version 0.1.6? It doesn't appear to be on food4rhino. I'm getting a lot of random "Solution exception:Object reference not set to an instance of an object." error messages with the current version, so the latest version might fix this.

Now for the praise:

I love Elefront, and it has really helped lift the tools I developed for my PhD to the next level. Absolutely love it; adds a whole new perspective.

Cheers,

Pieter.

Permalink Reply by Dimitar Pouchnikov on September 6, 2015 at 7:31am

I am also quite curious to get 0.1.6 running. Where can we get it from?

Permalink Reply by Claudio on February 3, 2016 at 11:19am

Hello every one.

I ran into a problem using the Elefront plug-in. I have as input 20 objects (all surfaces) and when I bake the geometry only 14 objects get baked. I'm running Rhino 5 (64) latest GH version and Elefront Lite 1.1.0

2015-Nov-03.

Attached the Gh definition with input and baked geometry internalized

Thank you all

Attachments:

Elefront_test_01.gh, 54 KB

Permalink Reply by Claudio on February 3, 2016 at 7:09pm

Found the problem. The component works just fine. The issue was that some of my geometry was considered as invalid by Rhino. Rebuild the objects and voila...problem solved

cheers

Permalink Reply by David Laquerre on May 8, 2017 at 10:27pm

Hi Ramon,

I just started studying Elefront after watching the lectureyou gave at HKU in 2014 ("Live demonstration of Elefront") on Youtube.

Pretty amazing stuff, fairly easy to grasp and really useful!

after watching the video I emulated the workflow demonstrated as it applies to the project I'm currently working. One function that I'm missing though is the export to .CSV file you mention @1:11... has this cluster been made to a component in Elefront3? I can't seem to find anything that would do this kind of export.

Thanks,

David

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on May 9, 2017 at 2:40am

Hi Ramon,

You dont specifically need Elefront for that. You just create a Panel and right-click > Stream Contents. Then you give it a .csv file name and it will continually update that file.

Permalink Reply by David Laquerre on May 9, 2017 at 3:29am

Right!

thanks a lot!