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 Graham Hawkins on October 11, 2012 at 10:25am

Nathan, this looks brilliant - can it be downloaded yet? I have been trying to get gis data into Rhino/grasshopper for a long time but my grasshopper skills are still very crude!

Permalink Reply by djordje on October 11, 2012 at 10:53am

Very, very interesting. I can not wait til I try it out!

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Sandoval on October 11, 2012 at 11:48am

Awesome work Nathan!

when can we expect to see a download?

This would definately be a great tool for use here at the office!

Let me know,

Jon

Jonathansandoval@smithgill.com

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on October 12, 2012 at 12:08am

Yeah. Since I did a majority of the work at our office... Seattle Perkins+Will... I have to get approval to share; however, I didn't just put it up here to show off... I can definitely relay/explain how it works and how I built it. Any one have any questions? I didn't do any of the fancy work like Ben Golder (finches)... I use a stand-alone public domain parser that converts .shp files to .txt and then use a series of VB.net text streaming classes to chop it into the selected region. I'm definitely a beginner to novice programmer... but none-the-less it's been distributed throughout Perkins+Will and should save a lot of time.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Sandoval on October 12, 2012 at 7:52am

None the less impressive! Yea it would be great if you could share our office here in Chicao could use a streamlined tool like this! And I am very interested in taking your route/approach.

Shoot me an email
Jonathansandoval@smithgill.com

-Jon

Permalink Reply by Navaneeth on October 12, 2012 at 1:40am

This is really interesting. Brilliant idea,Nathan Lowe!!

Permalink Reply by David Stasiuk on October 12, 2012 at 2:50am

Amazing work! I'd love to see a blog post describing how you developed the front end. It looks really sophisticated, especially for a "novice" programmer!

Permalink Reply by Robin Dripps on October 12, 2012 at 8:17am

Nathan,

This would be such a useful definition for a lot of the teaching we are doing in both the architecture and landscape architecture programs here that I am hoping the P&W would consider this as a contribution to elevating the discipline and let you go public. As has been already mentioned this is a very elegant interface to further design explorations in GH.

Thanks for any consideration of letting this out.

robin

Permalink Reply by djordje on October 12, 2012 at 9:25am

Just one question Nathan: your application can "import" 3d model of only those parts of cities from Google Earth, which actually exist in 3d? For example, some smaller town in let's say New Mexico, which does not have a 3d buildings preview in Google Earth, can not be imported into Rhino using your application?
It would be imported, but only the terrain without the buildings? I am right or wrong?

Thank you for the reply.

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on October 12, 2012 at 2:50pm

The Google interface only is used to show the map around the selected address. The buildings and any other 3D information is all from the GIS data set that is imported in the beginning. I'm assuming that anywhere that has GIS information will also have an address geolocated by Google.

Permalink Reply by Nathan Lowe on October 17, 2012 at 3:23pm

Just a quick update. I'm totally dropping the cheesy text file conversion process. I've selected a great VB.net DLL that deals with GIS functions... The cropping can now occur natively on shape files.

Permalink Reply by Toussaint Jimenez Rojas on November 12, 2012 at 10:24am