Definition of Field Component

Dear All

I find the new field components are very interesting and useful. My question is what is the source data of a field component like and can we input some pre-calculated data into a field? For example, a CFD data. It will be very useful to analyse CFD result in Grasshopper with the help of Field Line component.

Anyone have a idea?

Best

Bing

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on August 28, 2012 at 10:04am

HI IcyKing,

The field in question is a Magnetic Field. You might get better results for Vector Fields for CFD with Daniel Hambelton's SPM plug-in for Grasshopper

Permalink Reply by Bing Wang on August 28, 2012 at 10:42am

Thank you. It is very powerful plugin with the idea of particle tracing.

However, for CFD the flow field is given already. What we need is functions like generating contours lines, iso-surfaces, streamlines(this could be done by particle tracing but not necessary)

New to Grasshopper, but I appreciate if anyone know some plugin could do these.

Best

Bing

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 28, 2012 at 10:33am

Hi Bing,

a Field is a new type of data in the Grasshopper core product. We already had numbers, text, vectors, curves etc., 0.9 introduces fields. Fields are collections of one or more Field Elements. A Field Element can be any algorithm which provides a certain force for any given point in space. I added some default elements (probably more to come in future releases) such as Point, Line, Spin and Vector, but it is possible to write your own, see my reply here.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Bing Wang on August 28, 2012 at 11:44am

Thank you for reply. Sorry I'm not totally understand the example file based on my little knowledge of grasshopper and coding. But based on the example file it seems that a Field is a collection of plane, am I right? If yes, it is easy to understand the plane represents the points but what represents the force?

This is very interesting to me because the idea of Force Line is very similar to streamline, which I'm trying to calculate. Could you also explain a little bit about how the force line is generated?

Thank you so much.

Best

Bing

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on August 28, 2012 at 1:01pm

A field is a three dimensional entity. The field element example I wrote just happens to be based on a plane, but that's not a requirement. All the field elements I ever wrote are analytic, meaning the forces they create can be represented by fairly simple equations. If you want to create a field from measurements, then that is also totally possible, but will probably require a lot more programming.

Once you have a field though (be it composed of native or custom elements), you can use the Field components to sample it and trace field lines through it. This still requires more development on my part, the Field data type and the Field components are still very young.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Bing Wang on August 28, 2012 at 1:20pm

Thank you so much David. This is something I have been keep looking for. So happy to see that it is in the developing plan.

Best

Bing

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