Meerkat: GIS to Grasshopper

Though not as streamlined as some other methods of bringing shape files into Grasshopper, Meerkat combines a straightforward UI in a .exe file with a handful of GH components to make 3D site models from GIS shape files. The UI provides a quick method of cropping the site to a more manageable size for use in Grasshopper.

Meerkat GIS to Grasshopper Overview from Nathan Lowe on Vimeo.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Toussaint Jimenez Rojas on October 1, 2013 at 4:39pm

i will enjoy testing your Addon in the First release cuz i'm working on my Thesis Project, so i need to manage SHP files to make studies of New posibilities of the Actual Zoning code of Buenos Aires in a Parametric way. so your Plugin will be so usefull for me, actualy i'm working with Finches and the Native SHP file but both in sometime crash for my purpose so i will be in touch wating for the release of your piece

Permalink Reply by Gui Talarico on November 1, 2013 at 11:26am

If you are experiencing crashes with Rhino 5, make sure you right-click>Properties>"Unblock" each of the plugin's files individually. Solved it for me!

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on November 1, 2013 at 12:10pm

Thanks a lot, Gui! I'll post that on Food4Rhino!

Permalink Reply by Gui Talarico on November 5, 2013 at 8:52am

You are welcome!

On a different topic, do you have any experiences using multipatch shapefiles?

I work and DC, and I am trying to find a way to import the city's GIS data.

Unfortunatelly, I am strugling to find building height information. The only layer available, is shapefile which contains buildings as meshes.

Meerkat says the shapefile is not compatible. Do you know of an alternative method for cropping these and importing them? Thanks!

http://dcatlas.dcgis.dc.gov/metadata/BldgPly_3D.html

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on November 5, 2013 at 9:56am

The limitation of shapefile types is due to the limitations of the EasyGIS DLL that I'm implementing. There are other opensource shape file parsers... but I'm not familiar with the ones that would parse a multipatch. I'll skim around today and will let you know what I find...

Permalink Reply by UniqeSPACE on November 3, 2013 at 12:16am

Hi Nathan,

Thanks for creating this pluggin because, before I discovered what shape files were, I've been manually drawing out site models in autocad and rhino line by line. Now that I know what shapes files are and having used this to create a site plan, now I want to be able to extrude the SHP files in Rhino on the Z axis and be able to visualize my site plan in 3D. So, using the existing plugin, what features can I do to extrude the Shp Files to the exact heights of the given data in the Shp Files? Thanks!!

Permalink Reply by Gui Talarico on December 12, 2013 at 8:49am

Hi Nathan-

The version I am current using is set to expire 01/2014.

Do you have plans to extend that?

Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on December 12, 2013 at 10:17am

Yes, definitely! I'm going to release the update a day or two before the expiration, and the next version will expire in June or so (though updates will probably occur in that span) if you're looking to plan longer-term.

Permalink Reply by Gui Talarico on December 13, 2013 at 11:41am

Great. I have been testing it at work, and it works incredibly well.

I really do appreciate you sharing your work

Cheers

Permalink Reply by Brent Watanabe on January 15, 2014 at 9:04am

edit* I'm stupid...I was looking at the wrong one!

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on January 15, 2014 at 9:47am

No problem! Thanks for checking it out!

Permalink Reply by Anastasios Kokkos on August 5, 2014 at 6:28am

Hi Nathan! Thank you for sharing your work! When I trigger the boolean on the 'Import shapefile' component I get an error saying : 'google' undefined!

Any ideas how I can work this out? I really need to work with your plug in and I found my self stack in the very early of it!

Thanks!

Tasos