Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Students learn Grasshopper by designing cycling shoes


NuVu Studios, an innovation school for middle and high school students in Cambridge, Massachusetts, uses the studio environment for hands-on problem solving.

NuVu Studios chooses their students based on their portfolios of work in computer science, engineering, music, and the arts. "We teach students how to navigate the messiness of the creative process, from inception to completion." The students work on creative, collaborative projects, with each project usually lasting about two weeks. They end up with a portfolio of their products and documentation of their design decisions. 

In a session on health and wellness, students Jesse Roberts, Max Steinberg, Leo Connelly, and Joey Raskin-Lantos wanted to make sports shoes easier to use. So they designed a bicycling cleat geared to the beginning triathlete. As part of the process, they learned Grasshopper and Rhino for 3D modeling and printing.

The 3D-printed exoskeleton fits around a running shoe and straps onto the athlete's running shoe. The exoskeleton was designed to eliminate changing shoes between the bicycle and running legs of a triathlon.



Saturday, March 28, 2015

iRhino ranks high with Marc Fornes

Situation Room
Storefront for Art and Architecture, NYC
Photo: Miguel de Guzmán
In their Tech Specs Core77 interviewed ten designers, discovering what software they used daily. Other questions covered their computer setups, most-used software, favorite apps, and biggest tech gripes.

The final interview was with Marc Fornes, founder of the design studio THEVERYMANY. Marc specializes in structures generated through computational design and fabrication. Trained as an architect, he is now interested in computation and code development as a way to generate form, shape, and installation in architecture.

Marc's favorite app? "With Rhino 3D, there is an app that we use a lot call iRhino. It allows us to send a model to someone with no clue how to use 3D software. We use that one quite a bit."

Marc's most used software? "Rhino 3D is the main software that we use. Inside Rhino, we have code editor in which we write our code -- we use the Python language. The application is just a way to visualize what we do."

Core77 publishes articles, discussion forums, event calendars, job listings, and various other services for industrial designers.


3D print your designs locally


3D Hubs aims to give Rhino users the easiest possible way to bring their digital content into the physical realm. That’s the vision and design for 3D Hubs. Through 3D Hubs, Rhino users now have access to up to 14,000 printers worldwide in over 147 countries. Metal, plastic, nylon and just about any other material can be 3D printed just around the corner from your home or office.

To access one of the 3D printers on 3D Hubs, make sure your Rhino model is printable using our tips to prepare your mesh (found on the plug-in page). Then export your .stl from Rhino to 3D Hubs using the plug-in and choose a 3D print location.  You can pick up the product at the preferred printer location or have it shipped to you.

Friday, March 27, 2015

Intro to Rhino and 3D printing course, NYC


Intro to Rhino and 3D printing, NYC
Thursdays, April 2, 9, 16
7pm-9pm
Cost: US$150

3D printing is becoming an essential tool in design and digital fabrication. The ability to use 3D modeling tools comes in very handy in the process. Rhino is one of the best applications available for this purpose. This class will introduce you to basic concepts behind 3D printing and 3D modeling and help you get started making your own small creations. Participants will learn core 3D modeling tools of the Rhino software, learn to navigate around underwater obstacles of 3D design, and explore various approaches for sketching and surface modeling.

This class is being offered by PioneerWorks.

Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium - Al Ain



Stadium of the Year 2014 winner, Public Vote #10, Jury Vote #1
Location: Al Ain, UAE
Design: Pattern Design Ltd.

For the Hazza Bin Zayed Stadium, the facade's conceptual design was developed primarily in Grasshopper, as was the generation and sight line analysis for the bowl. Grasshopper was also used in later stages of detail design to rationalize the unique facade panel sizes.

The roof's sweeping form was modeled in Grasshopper. The roof was continuously analyzed for structural stability, daylight penetration, and thermal and solar performance. This ensured that the final design was the most structurally efficient option to meet both the shading and architectural needs.


Thursday, March 26, 2015

PhD scholarship in integrating building physics for performance control - IaaC


Applications open // PhD scholarship in integrating building physics for performance control at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IaaC)


InnoChain is a 4-year international research network for highly motivated young scientists, where state-of-the-art research combines with a comprehensive training and secondment programme. The network is funded by the European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network scheme.
The research network assembles a highly cross disciplinary team of experienced researchers drawn from architecture (CITA/KADK (coordinator), Bartlett School of Architecture, Institut d'Arquitectura Avançada de Catalunya and Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan) and engineering (Universität Stuttgart/ITKE and Universität für Angewandte Kunst Vienna/IOA) and leading industry partners (Foster + Partners, White Arkitekter, BIG, HENN, ROK, Cloud 9, Buro Happold, str.ucture, designtoproduction, Smith Innovation, Blumer-Lehmann, S-Form, Factum Arte Desarrollos Digitales and McNeel Europe).
This call is for a 3-year PhD Scholarship that is fully integrated within the network. The PhD student will be enrolled at IAAC-UPC. It is our ambition that the PhD will start in September of 2015.

Singapore National Stadium, Singapore


Stadium of the Year 2014 winner, Public Vote #8, Jury Vote #3
Location: Singapore
Design: Arup Associates, DP Architects

The Singapore National Stadium's architecturally appealing roof structure is comprised of a series of 3D triangular trusses. For this design, Arup needed to fully integrate both the architectural and structural design. They established a common interface to transfer the parametric intelligence between the various software. Software that included Digital Projects, Rhino, and Oasys GSA (Arup's structural analysis package). The linking optimized the roof's form with the varied truss depths, layout to arch rise, and other geometry defining parameters. With this efficiency, the team could iterate through the varied possible design solutions.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

King Abdullah Sports City National Stadium - Jeddah


Stadium of Year 2014 winner, Public Vote #13, Jury Vote #7
Location: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Design: Arup Associates

King Abdullah Sports City National Stadium was generated in Grasshopper and Rhino.

A ribbon of bracing and tie-down v-frames encircle the stadium. These express the structure, while echoing the mashrabiya screens of traditional Arabic and Islamic architecture and design.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Arena Corinthians, Sao Paulo


Stadium of the Year 2014 winner, Public Vote #4
Location: Sao Paulo
Design: CDC Arquitetos / DDG Arquitetura

Arena Corinthians was the home of the opening ceremony for the World Cup 2014 in Sao Paulo. The 3D design of this entire structure, with its parts, were realized with Rhino.

Other design details include a west facade of a mosaic of curved glass panels fixed to a special system of blocks and stainless steel cables, designed to absorb wind pressure. The east facade of glass structural panels is embedded with LEDs, for illuminated information and signage.

Monday, March 23, 2015

HAL Robotics at BIMWorld Paris


BIMWorld 2015
Paris, France
March 25-26

HAL Robotics will be exhibiting at BIMWorld 2015 in Paris stand with ABB Robotics France. Come see the latest developments in HAL and see it in action with a robot!

Saturday, March 21, 2015

New version of Kangaroo

The new version of Kangaroo (2.0) is now available on food4Rhino.

This is a complete rewrite of the solver and all components. It is a first release for testing. All the features are still subject to change.

You can install this alongside the older version.

Kangaroo is an interactive physics/constraint solver and Grasshopper plugin for designers. It consists of a solver library and a set of Grasshopper components.


Stade Vélodrome - Marseille

SCAU photo

Stadium of the Year 2014 winner, Public Vote #6
Location: Marseille, France
Design: SCAU

The Stade Vélodrome was generated from a consortium of Arema, GFC, SCAU, and EGIS. Elioth, the team from EGIS, applied its expertise in the roof and cladding to this steel structure. Elioth implemented large-scale parametric geometric modeling tools with Rhino and Grasshopper, using these in conjunction with finite element software. These tools enabled real-time updating of the computational models. To generate and re-generate the model in a few minutes for the framework of thousands of members, Elioth relied on this parametric geometry.

Also, one side of the stadium includes a transparent area to let sunshine through to the lawn. Using algorithm optimization, Elioth used Rhino Grasshopper + Galapagos to generate the shape of a water drop for the outline of the area. 

Friday, March 20, 2015

LastElf new features










LastElf has announced two sets of new features:

New features for verifying two lasts:
  • 2D section comparison
  • 3D last comparison
These features can output the comparison results easily and quickly.

New features for orthopedic lasts and customized lasts.


PatternElf released


PatternElf is a new footwear plugin for Rhino 5 developed by DES. PatternElf has two design procedures, 3D/2D and 2D Only.

3-D/2-D
  • Reverse engineering for shoe lasts, meshes to NURBS.
  • 3-D last flattening, halves design procedures (Merge, Length, Spring, Lasting).
  • Imports ImagineElf3D files, creates 2D halves / 2D curves / 2D patterns automatically.
  • Drawing curves on 3D lasts, 2D halves, or simultaneously.
  • Pattern design by Pattern Engineer (same with 2D Only design procedure).
 
2-D Only
  • Designs 2D sketch on halves.
  • Creates 2D patterns from 2D sketches.
  • Pattern design by Pattern Engineer
  • Object-oriented pattern design (Allowance, Stencil, Notches...)
  • Object-oriented pattern morph (Spring, Match, Straighten, Crease...)
  • Process (History) editor.
  • Exports to cutting machine. (HPGL format)


Thursday, March 19, 2015

Rhinoforyou at BIMWorld Paris



Paris, France
March 25-26

Rhinoforyou will be exhibiting at BIMWorld 2015 in Paris (stand 31 - MEDIACONSTRUCT). Come see Rhino 5, Grasshopper, Geometry Gym, VisualARQ, and the latest IFC developments!

HAL Robotics will also be there at the ABB stand!

ROB|ARCH 2016 Call for Papers and Workshops


Workshops: March 15-17, 2016
Conference: March 18-19, 2016
University of Sydney

The adoption of digital fabrication in creative industries continues to accelerate as the potential for innovation and creative expression using robotics is harnessed. ROB|ARCH 2016 will provide hands-on experience with the most recent robotic technologies and provide a platform for dissemination. It is an opportunity for researchers and industry to exchange expertise, explore methods, compare techniques, and forge new connections.

Rob|Arch is a bi-annual conference series on using robots and robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design. Initiated by the Association for Robots in Architecture, it links industry with cutting-edge research institutions. In 2012 the conference was run by its founders in Vienna (Austria). In 2014 it was then hosted by the University of Michigan (USA). In 2016, the conference will travel to Australia, where The Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at The University of Sydney is proud to host the conference. 

ROB|ARCH 2016 brings architects, artists, designers, fabricators, and industry leaders together.

The organizers of Rob|Arch2016 invite authors to submit papers with original research on the use of robots in architecture, art, and design. With the theme "Trajectories", this year’s conference aims to advance the discourse surrounding robotic fabrication and creative robotics, moving on its path toward integrating human-robot interactions informed by sensor input and real-time feedback in diverse environmental conditions.

The Sydney Rob|Arch2016 will occur shortly before Easter 2016, with Dagmar Reinhardt and Rob Saunders of the University of Sydney as conference chairs. They are joined by Marjo Niemelä (University of Sydney), Mari Velonaki and Hank Haeusler (UNSW), Chris Knapp and Jonathan Nelson (Abedian School of Architecture, Bond University), Jane Burry, Roland Snooks, and Nicholas Williams (RMIT), Dave Pigram (UTS), and Tim Schork and Jon McCormack (Monash University) as co-chairs.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Intermediate Grasshopper Online Training


Join us for Intermediate Grasshopper Online Training
24-27 March 2015

Instructor Andres Gonzalez explores the intermediate concepts of generative modeling in Rhino 5 using the Grasshopper add-on. He will apply these concepts to Grasshopper intermediate design and development numerous in numerous real-life examples with you. This course is for design professionals who are looking to efficiently learn concepts and features of Grasshopper at an accelerated pace in an instructor-led online environment.

This course requires Intro to Grasshopper training or equivalent.
Space is limited. Register today!

Schedule
Orientation with GoToTraining - Tuesday 24 March 2015, 9:00 am-10:30 am
Class Sessions: 25-27 March 2015 9:00 am-1:00 pm (PDT)
Online Price: US $215

All times listed are Pacific Daylight Time (PDT, Seattle, WA, United States)


Tuesday, March 17, 2015

New apps on food4Rhino


With 180 Rhino plugins and Grasshopper add-ons, food4Rhino recently reached 1,000,000 downloads!

Here some popular and new apps:



Kangaroo constraints+Firefly+LeapMotion from Daniel Piker on Vimeo.
Interaction with Kangaroo constraints using the LeapMotion finger tracking controller.
Thanks to Andy Payne for the Leap reader component in Firefly.


Maria Chiara Virgili, Maxwell Render Xpert

In her article on the Maxwell Render blog, Rhino trainer, Maria Chiara Virgili, explains how she uses Rhino and Maxwell Render to recreate the interiors of a chain of pizzerias in Italy.  

When asked why she uses Maxwell, she says, “Maxwell is the most realistic render machine I’ve ever used, the organization is simple and I don’t have to waste too much time guessing valuesit is all very self-explanatory. It’s not difficult to create a material from scratch or specific textures, and the same goes for the lights, which are truly exceptional…The customers love to see projects in the most realistic, virtual way as with Maxwell, frequently confusing them with real photo shots. It is amazing to see their surprise when they discover that these are not photo shots!!”Read here for the complete story...




Friday, March 13, 2015

Lands Design WIP XII


Lands Design for Rhino is a software for designing gardens, green spaces, and landscapes that run in the Rhino environment.

Lands Design provides tools for producing technical drawings in 2D and 3D of the green space to work with, and realistic images and virtual tours through the project to perform.

Lands Design is ideal for landscape architects, urban planners, town council technicians, constructors, designers and draftsmen, environmental departments, nurserymen, gardeners…

Arena4D for Rhino—new version



Arena4D is a rapidly developing software product, specializing in the visualization, exploitation, and animation of huge point clouds and GIS data.  If you collect, edit, analyse, register, reverse-engineer, create videos, present or simply view point cloud data from any scanner, Arena4D is the ideal manufacturer independent visualization product.

What's new in Arena4D for Rhino 1.2.0:

  • Slice
  • Clip
  • Snap to Point
  • Arena4D - Lighting 
  • Arena4D - Smoothing 
  • Arena4D - Point Coloring
  • Magnification tool
  • Protected VPC files 
  • Attach construction plane to slices
  • Align slice to a curve
  • Reduce point density in perspective view
  • Compatibility mode for older hardware 

Details and download...

CL3VER 3.0 released



Palo Alto, March 11, 2015.  CL3VER, the cloud-based platform for interactive 3D presentations, has released CL3VER 3.0. This new platform generation is dedicated to engineers, architects, and other design professionals. CL3VER 3.0 is a much improved version of the CL3VER platform that includes WebGL GPU-based real-time lightmap technology, V-Ray material support, and a new scene sharing system that speeds up the production workflow for cross platform interactive 3D presentations.

Download the Rhino to CL3VER 3.0 plugin from food4Rhino...

Thursday, March 12, 2015

London-UK Grasshopper user meeting

After a successful meeting last year, the London-UK Grasshopper Group announced this year's meeting details.

It takes place at BuroHappold Engineering's newly refurbished headquarters.

  • Location: 17 Newman Street, London W1T 1PD
  • Date and time: April 15,  6-8 pm


There will be exciting presentations, including one by the Smart Space Group led by Shrikant Sharma. S
ave the date!



Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Unfold Moving Matter workshop, Milan


Re-activating Milan's Ex-Industrial
7-12 April 2015

Milan's Design Week is the most important event worldwide for design and innovation. In the past five years, the "Ventura-Lambrate" district has been the new platform where all the emerging designers, architects, and visionaries took over the Ex-Industrial zone through the growing trend of industrial refurbishments. This year, the city of Milan will be hosting the "World Expo", one of the most vital events in Milan's contemporary history, integrating an era of modern development. The issue of Milan's unused and Ex-Industrial buildings remains in question.

The Unfold Moving Matter workshop aims to approach the regeneration of a forsaken warehouse, named 'SBODIO32', at the edge of Milan's new design district.


Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Creating a Guitar Body with RhinoCAM, new tutorial

Creating-Guitar-Body-RhinoCAM

Creating a Guitar Body with RhinoCAM with Taylor Hokanson
New course available on Lynda.com

Are you interested in making your own instruments? Do you want to see how computer-aided fabrication results in real-world products? This course is for you. Educator/DIY engineer Taylor Hokanson demonstrates how to use RhinoCAM to prepare a 3D model of an electric guitar body/neck for later fabrication on a CNC mill. This project covers a variety of techniques, including flip milling, profiling, pocketing, horizontal roughing, and parallel finishing, and shows how to adjust the model to account for third-party components like pickups.

Topics include:
  •  Setting up and editing the model
  • Adding bridges for flip milling
  • A variety of two-axis and three-axis machining operations
  • Simulating and troubleshooting multiple tool paths

New service release for RhinoGold 5.0


New RhinoGold 5.0 Service Release 1

Just one month after announcing RhinoGold 5.0, RhinoGold has a new service release!

A few of the improvements are:
  • Improved integration with the new Dynamic Cap, in many different places.
  • New Pave improvements, with Automatic, Intercalate, and Linear fill options.
  • Keyframe Animation added.
  • Bug fixes.
  • See more details in the complete list of the improvements.

You can update two ways:






Friday, March 6, 2015

Tech workshops at Facades+ Conference, NYC



New York City
April 16-17, 2015

The Facades+ Conference is next month and they are once again offering a great line-up of tech workshops. Come participate in a full day of hands-on instruction by industry experts in a small, one-on-one, classroom setting. These workshops will provide professionals and academics with the skills and knowledge to work with cutting-edge technologies in a fast-paced and intensive environment. Choose from:

  • Responsive Facade Prototypes (Arduino, Firefly, Grasshopper)
  • Photogrammetry: Scanning to 3D models (Autodesk 123D Catch, Rhino)
  • Parametric Facade Systems & Logistics Sequencing (Rhino, CATIA, Revit, more)

Tecnológico de Monterrey - Campus León




Tecnológico de Monterrey - Campus León
Authorized RhinoFabStudio

The University Tecnológico de Monterrey, located in León, Mexico, offers educational programs in their RhinoFabStudio León.

Xavier Martinez is the Director of the Industrial Design Program of the University. He gives a great explanation of what the degree is about in this video.

Visit their RhinoFabStudio León site which is a place were they share and display the work of their students.

For more information, please contact Xavier Martinez or call +52 477 710 9000.


What is a RhinoFabStudio? RhinoFabStudio™ (fabrication studio) is a small-scale digital workshop, certified by McNeel, with an array of Rhino and Rhino compatible software and computer controlled tools and training. These tools cover the various leading-edge industrial methods and materials needed to design, analyze, and fabricate almost anything.

Grasshopper D+O+F at McNeel Miami




Grasshopper D+O+F at McNeel Miami 
March 11-12, 2015
8 am-5 pm
US$495 per person

Course description
This workshop will give students a functional understanding of Grasshopper and parametric design. This will allow them to build on this understanding into more advanced projects of their own including design optimization and data-driven design.
 
Rhino Level 1 training is required to be able to take this training.
Details.


Location
McNeel Miami
1538 NW 89th Court
Miami, FL 33172
United States


To register
Email: Jackie Nasser
Phone: 305 513 4445


Thursday, March 5, 2015

Architectural Visualization Workshop in Barcelona


16-17 April 2015
Barcelona, Spain
  
The focus of this workshop is to provide all the necessary knowledge to make renderings inside the Rhino platform. We will use V-Ray 2.0 for Rhino to develop such renderings.

In these two intense days, participants will learn the workflow for rendering inside Rhino with the V-Ray plugin. 

Day one starts as an introduction and ends with some advanced topics. Day two covers advanced settings and post-production.

The course starts with rendering basics and then covers more advanced settings to end up with some tips for post-producing in Adobe Photoshop. Participants will develop typical case studies about rendering architectural visualizations, interior visualizations, and product design, among other basic case studies that use rendering as a main representation technique. While developing those case studies, participants learn how to handle V-Ray parameters and how to create textures inside the normal workflow for rendering. 

Instructor: Matúš Nedecký from FlyingArchitecture
Language: English
Schedule: 16-17 April 2015 // 9.00-18.00
Organizers: icreatia, SMD, FlyingArchitecture


Computational Design and Digital Forming lecture and workshop - Sao Paulo (Brasil)



March 2015, the Laboratory of Automation and Prototyping forArchitecture and Construction (LAPAC) of University of Campinas - São Paulo will be visited by the German architect Peter Mehrntens as part of the Research Project "Contemporary Architecture and Automation, Practice and Reflection" sponsored by FAPESP (São Paulo Research Foundation).

Mr. Mehrtens will give an open lecture called "Application of digital forming processes in contemporary architecture" for students and community members on Monday, March 23, at the School of Civil Engineering, Architecture and Urban Design - FEC. He will also teach at the workshop "Introduction to parametric modeling and scripting of building envelopes for digital fabrication".

Peter Mehrtens is specialist on computational design and file-to factory fabrication of customized building envelopes.

Open Lecture:
Monday, 23 March 2015
School of Civil Engineering Auditorium
7:00 pm

Workshop:
23,24,25, 26 March 2015
LAPAC - UNICAMP
from 9:00-12 am / 2:00-5:00 pm
Registration required (Wilson Barbosa - wilsonbarbosaneto@gmail.com). Limited spaces.

Rhino training in South Africa


Check the new training sessions in Johannesburg (South Africa) organized by SimplyRhino South Africa:

  • SimplyRhino Level 1 (Beginner) - March 28-30
  • SimplyRhino Level 2 (Intermediate/Advanced) - March 31-April 2

Rhino 5 for Mac webinars


SimplyRhino UK has organized a series of free webinars featuring Rhino 5 for Mac:
  • Setting out 2D and 3D Curves - Wednesday 18 March 11.00 am
  • Creating Surfaces - Wednesday 15 April 11.00 am
  • Adding Detail - Wednesday 13 May 11.00 am

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Online Level 2 class starts next week


Image credit: Kyle Houchens, The Outside

Our Level 2 Rhino 5 online course begins next week. Have you registered yet? We still have a few seats left. Sign up today to secure your spot!

Dates/Times
  • Orientation: Monday, March 9, 9:00 am-10:30 am

  • Training: Tuesday-Thursday, March 10-12 and March 17-19, 9:00 am-1:00 pm
    Note: All times listed are Pacific time zone. Calculate your time zone.
All sessions are instructor-led and will be recorded for later viewing.  If you cannot make a session, watch the video and catch up before the class meets again.