GC or Grasshopper?

Hi,

I've been using GC for a few months now and have started getting into scripting in very basic C#, and creating my own user features. From what i can see Grasshopper seems to be pretty similar.

Can anyone who's used both explain the differences? I've noticed that this discussion board seems pretty lively, is it the main Grasshopper forum around? Is Grasshopper still a beta and does it suffer from bugs? Do Grasshooper programmers visit the forum? Is Grasshopper used in practices? etc etc.

Basically I'm thinking of switching as Grasshopper seems to be more popular but it means I'd have to learn 2 new programmes, i'm wondering what people's opinions are.

thanks. j

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sameer Kumar on February 2, 2010 at 3:03pm

Hi J,

I have not used both GC and Grasshopper so strictly speaking, I am not eligible to answer your main question. Leaving that aside, I will fill in on the other peripheral questions that you have asked.

This is the main forum for Grasshopper and David Rutten, the man behind GH, is often here helping people out. The amount of first-person contact we have with him is actually quite amazing and definitely unique if compared to most other similar platforms. As you have already noticed, this forum is quite lively; people are extremely generous with their time. I have relied on this forum from the first day of venturing into GH and have never had to look any place else for help.

Grasshopper is in beta but not buggy. It is in fact a very stable and dependable program. I am using it in a real world application (I work for a large architectural firm) and can vouch for that.

In my opinion, GH's strength is in the fact that it has made parametric modeling accessible to individuals like me who have little coding knowledge. Before this, there used to be a sense of exclusivity amongst people who could use GC or Catia or the likes. I think that is what is about to change.

Permalink Reply by Mårten Nettelbladt on February 2, 2010 at 3:43pm

Grasshopper is more accessible, more fun and it's organized in a much more pleasing and inspiring way I think. It's beeing developed now(!) and new great tools and functions pop up all the time.
I've used GC a little and from what I can tell GC is still a little more capable when it comes to creating your own "Components" for re-use and sharing. This is something that will soon be implemented in Grasshopper as "Clusters" though. If you're into unrolling developable surfaces, I believe that still works better in GC. Also, if you're really familiar with MicroStation and want to stay in that environment, then of course GC is the natural choice, but if you consider changing I think you'll find both Rhino and Grasshopper really easy to learn and also quite affordable.
Welcome to the forum!

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on February 3, 2010 at 6:40am

I would not call grasshopper 'stable,' though I suppose depending on the user, this is relative. In the 'production software' sense it is by no means stable.
That being said, I don't remember GC being too solid either in the early days.
Both programs take advantage of an existing framework (microstation/rhino) which should be familiar to the user.
For me the fundamental difference is organization and representation of elements in which GH excels far beyond any associative modeler. GC uses an industrial design paradigm which leaves a lot to be desired in terms of organization, the tree you see is derivative of the transactions and cannot be edited (when I used it last)...where in Grasshopper that is all you get. You construct the tree/representative diagram of the logic which I think connects the designer much more to the org of the elements.
Also, we will prob all have a bit of a bias. It would be nice if someone did a side by side comparison on some common techniques, though I do not have GC at the moment.

Permalink Reply by WT4 on February 3, 2010 at 12:35pm