Grasshopper 2009 Gold Edition available for download

Grasshopper 0.6.0055 is available for download:

EXE Installer

ZIP Installer

This is BETA software. Use at your own risk!

This release fixes a number of reasonably serious bugs:
- VB and C# components would have problems loading referenced assemblies from unexpected folders. This is (at least somewhat) fixed.
- Enabling objects would fail to properly enable input parameters for components, this is fixed.
- Probably some other ones too, my bookkeeping skills leave something to be desired.

It also offers some new functionality:
- A new Group object has been added. Groups allow you to visually link several components. Group colour cannot yet be changed, but by double clicking the group, the outline mode can be toggled.

- A new Markov widget has been added. This widget uses Markov chains to 'guess' which component you want to use next based on your behaviour in the past. It takes a while for it to get accustomed to you as a special and unique and lovable individual, so don't expect miracles right away.

- A new Profiler widget has been added (off by default). The profiler lists worst-case runtimes for parameters and components, allowing you to track down bottlenecks in networks and to compare different components in terms of performance.

- All widgets now have proper tooltips.

- Mouse picking has been improved. Different actions are now handled better and especially making new wires should be somewhat easier.

- Toolbars now draw separators between different groups of objects. Separators can be disabled via the View menu.

- Fuzzy searching has been improved.

- Scribbles now allow font sizes up to 100pt.

- All Complex Number components have been moved into their own Tab.

- Tabs are now scrollable when the width of all tabs exceeds the width of the window.

And of course a couple of new components (to be honest, I have no idea which ones are new since the last release):

- Repeat Data
- Random Reduce
- Domain Inclusion
- String Concatenation
- Sinc (Sinus Cardinalis) trigonometry function
- Spherical Cloud
- Sort Points
- Vector Rotate and Vector Mass Addition (are these really new? ... I forgot)
- Curve Dash pattern
- Nurbs Curve Control Points
- Metaball with custom charge overrides
- Curve self-intersections

Enjoy, and have a happy 2010!

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on January 4, 2010 at 5:56am

Of course:

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 4, 2010 at 7:18am

wow, that thing that shows you how much each component takes to load IS GREAT! thanks again for this remarkable product

Permalink Reply by Woo Jae Sung on January 4, 2010 at 9:30am

Hey David,

Thank you for the update, love it!!

Quick question for you. When I type in 'New' in VB component, for example, "dim ptsList as New list(of on3dpoint)", it seems like there is no automatic matching to 'New' anymore, though 'New' still works well. I guess it happened from the version 004X. Have any thought on it?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on January 4, 2010 at 11:01am

Hi Woo,

annoying huh? I'm getting increasingly more disillusioned with the QWhale editor we bought for handling the code-completion + syntax-highlighting. Too many issues that don't seem to get solved. I don't know yet how we're going to tackle this...

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on January 4, 2010 at 1:57pm

Aaaaaahhh!!! Great christmas present :)

Amazing work.

I was reading your comment about the bug i report some days ago. Point for you, was my mistake :)

Best Regards and Happy 2010.

Permalink Reply by Hyoung-Gul Kook on January 4, 2010 at 9:22pm

Thanks David, amazing version!

HG

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on January 5, 2010 at 8:20am

Thank you very much!

It's really great to see how this forum helps you in the development of GH:)

Just one quick question: How do metaballs work ?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on January 5, 2010 at 8:58am

"How do metaballs work?"

Are your referring to the Metaball components, the groups, how metaballs work in general or how they are implemented in my code?

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on January 5, 2010 at 10:26am

The component itself, there are three of them actualy and i got a bit confused.

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on January 5, 2010 at 10:40am

Metaballs are a strictly 2D affair so far. You have to supply a bunch of point locations which represent a set of electric charges in space. Each charge generates an electric field around it, which decays inverse-squarely.

The metaball itself is a curve which connects all the points in space (well, theoretically anyway, in reality it's an approximation) that have the same charge.

In one of the components you get to supply a point in space, the charge will be measured at this point and all the other points with similar charge will be found and connected.

In another component you have to supply the charge directly as a number.

In the third component, you can override the strength of each point charge, if you don't want to use the same charge for all of them.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Dimitry A. Demin on January 5, 2010 at 2:35pm

Gold Edition fantastic!
I'm enjoying it.
I'm trying old VB component with trees, but it doesn't work. What is new grammar for the tree stuff? Below you can find the gh definition.

Cheers!
Dimitry

--
Rostov
Russia

Attachments:

Schneckesurface2.ghx, 211 KB

Permalink Reply by Andrei Raducanu on January 5, 2010 at 9:53am

wow, the group thing is great! i used to do this by making a contour around sets of components, and i had to change the contour once my set grew or modified in some way. great addition!
a save selection would be great in future releases (similar tot the one in 3dmax)