Reference Geometry in Grasshopper - Groups

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on March 19, 2012 at 3:51am

These parameters refer to Grasshopper Groups not Rhino Groups.

In "native" Grasshopper there is only the ability to bring in the the objects that make up a group separately. i.e if you have a curves and surfaces and polysurfaces etc. then you would need Curve Param and Srf Param and BRep Param.

However there is an alternative way which uses the Geometry Pipeline component. This allows you to specify an objects name and it will reference anything in Rhino with that name (or mask). It also does layers. There is a filter on the component so you would need to make sure each of your geometry types is enabled. From the Pipeline you can then connect them to a Group Component located in the Transform Tab > Util Panel

Permalink Reply by Daniel Fink on March 19, 2012 at 4:40pm

Cool. Though I have found a work-around anyway, it would be nice for Grasshopper to see Rhino groups - so that specific sets of objects could have their own tree/branch sturcture once brought in...

Also the Pipeline method requires you to name your group manually (& individually) (it is not automatic -- copying a group with a name (eg, "Group01", "Name01") creates "Group02", "Name01"... which I guess could be useful in some situations, but not mine unfortunately.

Is there a plan for GH to enable this functionality in the future?

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on March 19, 2012 at 6:29pm

IIRC, you can use wildcards in the Pipeline component. If you set the name filter as "Group*" objects called "Group01", "Group02" and so on will be referenced.

 

EDIT: I re-read your post and realized this probably won't help you at all.

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on March 19, 2012 at 8:06pm

How it is possible that this component is so old (I cannot find it even in version history) and I dont know it ? This one is outstanding, thanks !

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on March 19, 2012 at 6:52pm

Try the following definition. It will display the groups contained in the Rhino document, you can then select the one you want. If you input a list of group names instead of a single one it will output the objects of each group in a different branch.

You don't need to type anything in the Pipeline component, its just there to (very inefficiently) update the groups when you make changes.

Attachments:

• groups.gh, 2 KB

Permalink Reply by Daniel Fink on March 19, 2012 at 7:04pm

Perfect! Thankyou.

Using Pipeline you can narrow the geometries the VB script needs to search through to find groups by limiting to certain layers, types etc; speeds it up a little. Also all nicely in a tree structure.

Cheers.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on March 19, 2012 at 7:23pm

Even if you limit the referenced geometry in the Pipeline component, all groups and objects contained in those groups will still show when you update the whole definition, they just won't be updated automatically in GH after you modify them in Rhino.

It will ofcourse speed things up since not all the geometry will be referenced in the Pipeline component.

Permalink Reply by Ondrej Strejcek on April 30, 2012 at 9:22am

hello, my problem is kind of same, but this solution doesnt work for me, this way i am able to see all the names of my group, but my groups are only bunch of curves, and the outcome is only cuves not the groups, (I want to arrange large number of sections of complicated object, so sometimes there is one closed curve sometimes there is a group of three ore more curves) i was hoping to work with groups in a matter of single brep.. is there something like this possible? thank you .. 

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on April 30, 2012 at 9:28am

There is a Grasshopper Group component. Once you have referenced your curves you can group them with it.