blocks in GH?

hi, I have been looking for some plug in or simple script in GH to deal with blocks, I have looked at some other post about how to insert and define or bake blocks in GH. but they all said there isn't any component in GH that supports blocks / instances.

I have encountered countless cases when doing a rendering in rhino (maxwell) and it is important to use blocks to define heavily used objects so we can save memory during render time (let say, scatters 200 trees, shrubs or rocks across a surface). because native GH component doesn't handle blocks, so far what I could do is to rely on sprinkler script from within Rhino.

it would be awesome if GH can identify, manage and keep records of block instances.

I believe because this is a very common problem, there should be a special plug in specifically made for dealing with blocks

any of you might know?

thank you T^T

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by nikos tzar on January 21, 2015 at 4:47am

this post poped up a couple of days ago. I haven't used elefront but it could be what you need.

Permalink Reply by Runnie on January 21, 2015 at 6:35am

I have just tried Elefront, awesomeeeee, I would recommend this add-on to all my friends. one of the best add on for GH. The new components can work with blocks but it can also input specific attributes (layer,material, or even user-based value). very useful for organizing large quantity of blocks in the scene..

just now I did some experiment, here is the pictures of blocks with random attributes applied (useful for randomizing material)

each of them are derived from a single block component, but different layers and material

awesome, thank you for the info,my friend :)))))) im so happy ^__________^

Permalink Reply by 未知 on January 21, 2015 at 8:55am

是否可以用orient 平面布置的方式一直复制下去只需要一个原始物体及平面不知是否可以这样理解

Permalink Reply by Runnie on January 21, 2015 at 9:04am

those primitive objects are in fact block instances, I was just testing with the block component in Elefront, I used simple primitive object for simplicity sake, it can be applied to any types of geometry. :) ^___^

Permalink Reply by Runnie on January 23, 2015 at 4:14am

@未知 : this is what I did with blocks attribute component in "Elefront", I throw more than 500 wood decks in the scene, derived from 3 parent wood blocks. scatter them with simple definition in GH, bake them in 3 different layers, only spent few seconds to play with the slider and then baked them up to Rhino and they are still blocks instances :)
told my friend about Elefront and all of them are excited. dont have to rely on other rendering plug in anymore.