WEEK 8: NATE HOLLAND LECTURE

27/04/17 — Lecture Notes

I’ve recorded a few notes today from our lecture by Nate Holland that I found quite interesting and that could quite possibly be implemented into our pavilion project, particularly in the BIM group. He also provided some very valuable tips for Grasshopper that everyone could find helpful.

Data VS Geometry

Things to consider:

• What are you showing? Is it just to be seen or does it need to be scheduled?
• You must understand this bridging of geometry to improve the planning process between platforms

Collaboration Techniques

• What we want to achieve: 2 people working on 1 grasshopper script at the same time (Not possible as of now)

Externalising Clusters

• But we can externalise clusters in Grasshopper in order to improve collaboration
• A workflow that we could user to achieve this:

GH user #1: Creates cluster and right click and select the export and reference (blue button) to save the cluster out to your network

GH user #2: Working file

GH user #1: Expired cluster, you can update it

Modular Code

• Grouping and singling tasks, colour coding and labelling of scripts — away in organising your workflow so it is easy to understand, especially for new users of GH — can organise final pavilion form script in this way

Grasshopper Tips

No flatten, simplify or path finder

• Suggests to not using flatten unless really needed and you cannot find another way. When using the unflatten tool, only use this if you have the same amount of data and make sure there are no nulls.
• Flatten — removes data structure to mash down to a list BUT there are alternatives: Trim (Removes from the right), P Shift (Removes from the left)
• Wrap and Unwrap to modify lists as objects (Metahopper) Wrap > Duplicate > Unwrap

Storing Data in the Model

Data from GH

• Human plugin — bake things with specific names and colours (layer, colour, name + more), user text is also automated by this plugin.
• Human UI plugin — for non GH users, you can view outputs of Grasshopper script in Rhino without GH open. Although requires a lot of scripting for a clean interface.
• Shutter Bug plugin — allows you to connect to Photoshop.