that used to be us

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 12:11pm

The book you mention seems to imply the US is falling behind in economic growth.

There seems to be a lot more interest in BIM solutions on the US (firms trying to switch from Autocad to software like Revit) than in Europe. The decision to switch to BIM is made on a cost-benefit basis. On the other hand, software like Grasshopper, while I genuinely think it's useful for many practical tasks, one of its main uses is still as a design toy for teachers and students that most of the time don't seem to translate to profitable designs.

You are not going to get out of a recession by designing fachades with voronoi tesselations.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on September 30, 2011 at 12:35pm

"You are not going to get out of a recession by designing facades with voronoi tesselations."

 

HA

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 12:47pm

That's not the proper way to quote, you should've written: "... fachades [sic] ..."

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on September 30, 2011 at 1:19pm

didn't think it mattered right now but ok.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 1:28pm

It's OK to ignore about half of what I reply.

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on September 30, 2011 at 6:29pm

.

Permalink Reply by taz on September 30, 2011 at 12:25pm

For-profit seminars are perhaps not the best way judge Grasshopper infiltration into practice...

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 12:35pm

Not necesarily. The atendees might be students, teachers or firms trying to produce a sophisticated design to enter in a competition for a public building.

If the end client is a public institution, there are no market forces at play and no way to tell if it's actually profitable.

Permalink Reply by taz on September 30, 2011 at 4:38pm

Exactly.  

 

Grasshopper is mostly in the "design" sector so no one (read: architecture firms) will showcase their mastery of it as it's only a tool, not an end product.

 

BIM is more downstream (read: coordination) and cross-sector (read: contractors) so people can the benefits are easier to see.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 5:40pm

If the benifits of BIM are easier to see, you'd expect to see more people interested in it here in Europe, but instead they attend "Parametric Architecture" seminars. Nothing wrong with it, but if you are aiming for economic growth, the US seems to be more interested in what actually matters.

Again, I see Grasshopper as an actual productive tool, I'm just arguing most of the hype is getting in Europe is for the wrong reasons.

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on September 30, 2011 at 4:40pm

Grasshopper flies under the radar as a power-drawing tool.  Managed correctly, it becomes a means to translate formal gyrations into construction documentation in a way that is much more efficient than hiring a bunch of CAD monkeys.

Plus, it can be leveraged in the Design/Build environment...as the designers and constructors work together to improve the design, a well paramaterized model can be adjusted according to various needs.

I'm currently building my business based on these principles.  One project I'm working on now is continuously evolving, and my model has the capacity to integrate these changes.  Ultimately, it's going to produce CNC files for about 700 unique elements.  Another project involves instantiating different steel connection elements on a dynamic surface...that one has 10000 pieces in it so far.  There's no way I could do either of these things without GH.  No way at all...and I am saving the end client a lot of money with these implementations.  I love using GH as a design tool...but I'm finding my bread and butter making it a drawing slave...and it's working very well for that.

Permalink Reply by Vicente Soler on September 30, 2011 at 5:29pm

Cool. Are any of your clients in the private sector?

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