Pain Points in Grasshopper

(Edit. David sez: Please append your (well explained) ideas/suggestions/wishes. I don't care much for what you want, I care why you want it.)

Perhaps this topic has been covered recently, but I don't see any active threads. We're looking for a plugin project and I'd like to get some feedback from the power users before choosing something.

So...

What is missing from grasshopper?

What would you like to connect to that you can't already connect to?

What kind of bottlenecks do you run into?

What secret wish do you have for Grasshopper that doesn't even seem possible?

What project have you been meaning to undertake but haven't had/won't have the time?

Just trying to brainstorm a few ideas here. There are so many great and useful plugins out there, it's hard to discover the gaps anymore.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Cheers,

Marc

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on June 13, 2014 at 1:18pm

Thinking about all the stuff exposed:

Multi canvas view: to be able to control and deal with several clusters (or the clusters opened and the general definition) or definitions at the same time.
A new solver system that lets you to specify what canvases are calculated and/or showed in the rhino viewports.
The block instancing on bake time is a the next big thing.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 16, 2014 at 12:27am

Once surface blending becomes available in RhinoCommon I'll implement it in GH. There will be a general effort in Rhino6+ to make more commands available as SDK methods.

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on June 17, 2014 at 11:29pm

nobody understands rational bezier splines

er ... hmm ... dare I say : SURBS (S = somebody)

BTW: are you after a-class surfaces?

best, Peter

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on June 18, 2014 at 1:17am

hey Tom

Well...I know myself (I believe, he he).

I think that's best to switch that a-class conversation off-line. I'll mail you some stuff that maybe you could find interesting.

I use a-class very frequently (either when designing ugly buildings or powerboats (that's far more interesting)). Use the latest reader + saved Views + that Model tree with these 3dpdf (stuff obviously not designed with Rhino)

best, Peter

Attachments:

171_wally_hull-Default-009.pdf, 2.5 MB
171_Wally_side_hatch-side_hatch-005.pdf, 505 KB

Permalink Reply by Diego on July 8, 2014 at 3:11am

Nice 3dpdfs... which tool do you use for that?

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on July 8, 2014 at 4:08am

For things routed to production (kinda like any AEC project, meaning classic "master drawings", shop drawings, BOM, specs etc etc) I design them using Microstation/Generative Components + imported parametric feature driven assemblies (*) made with Siemens NX and/or CATIA (PS: 3d PDF export capabilities are included to all Bentley suite of products).

For things that are prototypes and/or require complex kinematics and/or require only 3d modeling I always use CATIA/NX.

In rare occasions I use Quest3D for presentations (but interoperability woes always around making any proper translation a wishful thinking in most of cases).

(*) observe the complex hatch "hinge" that allows access from the boat's sides.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 17, 2014 at 11:49pm

Actually I think the first beta was supposed to have been released last december, I have no idea what happened to it.

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on June 19, 2014 at 6:55am

Isn't the HSL colour node what you want (in Display > Colour). It actually has an alpha input but is noted only as HSL and not HSLA, as it should be. Its strange, because the split nodes actually have the A for alpha in them, but HSL doesn't, which is confusing.

Actually you are right, just noticed that one is HSL and the other HSV, which makes no sense at all. Why have a HSL join, but a HSV split?

Right, ok that IS a pain. ;)

Permalink Reply by Sean McGuire on June 18, 2014 at 4:00pm

I'm surprised to have gone through seven pages and not seen this... perhaps this is a taboo topic:

interoperability

although there are plenty of great plugins that approach this topic re:revit (chameleon, opennurbs, visual-arq, etc), i would love if there was a faster and all encompassing gh native option to export to revit.

Permalink Reply by Santiago Diaz on June 18, 2014 at 6:45pm

I'd be in for an open source initiative for this (i.e. Lyrebird). Anyone else interested?

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on June 19, 2014 at 6:50am

Just noticed another major pain point in grasshopper - reading and writing text files.

The file path primitive can only set files and not folders. If i want to create or programatically create my own file name this is not possible at all as far as I know. I would love to have a Folder primitive, where I can set a folder. Then a node for folder contents, that gives me the filenames of the files in the folder as a list. That way I can retrieve a file name or use a folder as part of a file path, where I can then concatenate on my own file name. This would be very handy for reading and writing files. Especially for writing files the current system is very bad. Streaming the contents of a panel is cumbersome and totally breaks with common interaction patterns in Grasshopper. I have to enter the file name by hand and flick Stream contents on and off to write the file.

Also it would be great to be able to get some info about the current Grasshopper document, like the containing folder, filename, last saved time, size, etc.

So I would love: