Homework Tonight!

For tonight's homework I want everyone to go and explore Grasshopper. I don't just mean glance around at drop down menus I mean really have an in-depth investigation of an area that you don't normally see in your day-to-day use.

Then post your findings here. Everyone is to submit something that they never knew about before.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 4, 2013 at 11:21am

I will start the ball rolling:

I never knew... Template File. Brilliant!

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 5, 2013 at 2:51am

My new template file.

Consists of a grid drawn in Rhino and Loaded onto the Canvas in separate sections so that I can set Sketch Properties to colour and thickness of line to create the logo effect that sits in the top right hand corner.

for those that don't know you can create a Sketch Object on the canvas and then replace it with a Rhino Curve. The position and size will be reflected in Grasshopper. Once on the canvas you can move it around and changes its attributes but you won't be able to scale it:

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 5, 2013 at 4:08am

*should be top left hand corner :S

Permalink Reply by greg bethel on June 4, 2013 at 5:40pm

I had never noticed Solution > Upgrade Components. No idea when this feature was added, but could definitely save some time when updating an old definition. It warns you, but I'll mention again here that this is not undoable, so save as a new file first just in case.

Unfortunately it doesn't work for all Old components, like SqGrid and Expression for example, but seems to get most of them. I am still using 0.9.14 though, so maybe that is no longer the case...

Permalink Reply by djordje on June 5, 2013 at 2:32am

Great topic!

I was not aware of the View->Data viewer until today.
Pretty handy tool.

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 5, 2013 at 2:40am

To complete this assignment you need to do a "show and tell" :)

Permalink Reply by djordje on June 5, 2013 at 2:55am

Got it, teacher :)

It seem the Data Viewer replicates and combines the usage of Param Viewer and Panel.
You do not have to attach the Param Viewer and Panel to each output plug to see what's going on in there - just run Data viewer, enable the Auto Update option and click on particular plug.

For example, I clicked on the "P" output plug of the Square component. As you can see the Data Viewer instantly showed the branches structure, with it's paths, number of items on each branch, and each particular item:

Further more, it could be used for input plugs too, even Panels and Param Viewers itself.

Permalink Reply by Thomas J. Mrokon on June 5, 2013 at 3:25am

ahhhh the data viewer is great....

one of my surprising findings were the shortcuts while working with connections and nodes.

ALT+Left Mouse Button(LMB): to expand the canvas

STRG+SHIFT+LMB: to move a bunge of connections to another node

SHIFT+ALT+LMB: to copy nodes instantly

STRG+ALT+LMB: to find the used node in the tabs

There are only a few Tutorials where these are mentioned and the shortcuts-list in GH does not show them.

Permalink Reply by djordje on June 5, 2013 at 3:32am

Very nice Thomas, I was not aware of some of these.
For those with English keyboard, STRG is CTRL (Control) button.

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 5, 2013 at 3:38am

Ah....

Unfortunately those are broken in the new version :(

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 5, 2013 at 3:28am

Good one.

Handy tip: assign a shortcut to it for quick access mine is F12

I particularly like that you can have multiple Data Viewers open at the same time, and with typical Rutten flair I like the "target beam".

Permalink Reply by djordje on June 5, 2013 at 3:48am

How did you assign the shortcut?
File->Preferences->Shortcut and then what? By clicking on Data Viewer it becomes red, then typing the appropriate keyboard key, and then? How to confirm the chosen keyboard key?