New Rhino and Grasshopper book in Spanish

Grasshopper para Rhinoceros e Impresión 3D

A new book with more than 50 guided exercises, showing the power of algorithmic modeling in Grasshopper. It also includes examples of VisualARQ and Weaverbird.

Buy on Amazon...

Buy on fnac...

Buy on marcombo...

CAADence in architecture - Budapest (Hungary)

CAADence in architecture
Budapest, Hungary

June 16-17, 2016

International workshop and conference
www.caadence.bme.hu

Call for papers, participation, and workshops

The organizing committee is pleased to invite you to submit papers for CAADence in architecture, an international workshop, and conference. The event will take place at the Faculty of Architecture of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, in Budapest (Hungary) on June 16-17, 2016, in cooperation with leading CAAD industry members.

The focus of this event is the changing role of architects in increasing the integration of information technology into the design process.

Complete details...

Workshop: Algorithmic Design through BIM

June 16, 2016

Algorithmic design and building information modeling tools are being developed to meet specific aspects of these complex workflows, yet they often remain unconnected and provide limited help in the project's full scope.

GRAPHISOFT has been developing tools that respond to this problem by connecting two of the most established tools in their own fields - Grasshopper in the field of algorithmic design and ARCHICAD in building information modeling. 

The goal of the workshop is to introduce GRAPHISOFT’s solution to linking a versatile algorithmic design tool with a powerful BIM solution that forms a new approach to CAAD.  Specific aspects of the new methodology will be investigated through workflow examples gathered from reputable international design practices.  The session will help build awareness of the existing challenges of today’s contemporary BIM conscious architectural design from the perspective of generative design methodology.

Details and registration...

Rhino for 3D printing training in France (Antibes)

Design Systems Technologies present their new training session:

Rhino3D for 3D-printing

When: Feb 29 - March 2, 2016 

Where: Antibes, France

Instructor: Vanessa STEEG from McNeel Europe. 

The course will be held in English. Other languages will be supported (French, Spanish). 

The course is intended for product designers, product managers, engineers, hobbyists. Some knowledge of Rhino is required. 

Syllabus: 

Rhino 5 basics and user interface 

Creating and editing - Basics 

Organic modeling (surface creation & control point editing) 

3D printing specifics - Before modeling 

Building an object 

Optimizing geometry 

Mesh settings 

Extra modeling tips 

Analyzing geometry for 3D printing 

Repairing geometry for 3D printing 

Exporting to STL 

3D print software parameters (based on Zortrax or the UP) 

Support structures and positioning 

Let's print! (Printing tests included on the third day)

Details and registration... 

Pauhu pavilion - Tampere Architecture Week 2015

 

Project coordinator: Henri Käpynen

Architectural design: Toni Österlund (Geometria), Lisa Voigtländer

Client: Tampere Architecture Week
Location: Tampere, Finland

Read about the Pauhu pavilion, completely designed with Rhino/Grasshopper, using VisualARQ for the creation of the construction drawings. 

From the Pauhu Press Release:

"Pauhu pavilion was realized as a voluntary project as a part of Tampere Architecture Week, in Finland, bringing together architecture and design students and professionals in addition to a number of different sponsors. Tampere Architecture Week is an annual event about architecture and urban planning, intended to add interest and discussion about the built environment. The theme in 2015 – interaction – aimed to increase the possibilities for interaction between citizens themselves and between architects and citizens.

Functioning as an open stage for free expression and performance, Pauhu pavilion aims to highlight interaction as one of the most crucial subjects in our ever more privatied and secluded cities. The name “Pauhu” refers to the distant roar generated by the Tampere rapids, by the city around the pavilion, as well as by the artists and presenters the pavilion is hosting. The interlace of public, private and communal interests was essential and absolutely crucial in making Pauhu possible.

Along with its intended use as an active open-stage for public debates and performances Pauhu aims to promote forward looking thinking in architecture focusing on the innovative use of wood. The construction process fuses conventional and tested building methods with state-of-art digital design and fabrication processes. The pavilion was designed using algorithm-aided design methods as a detailed and accurate parametric 3D-model, from which all construction information and fabrication data was derived from.

The inner smooth form of the pavilion is inspired by the flowing waves of the rapids, as well as the intricate plywood sculptures by the legendary Finnish sculptor Tapio Wirkkala. The smooth interior is seemingly carved out of a solid block of rough wood, which is emphasized by the contrasting colour tones. The interior is generated as a ruled surface by a rotation of plywood strips along the width of the pavilion, and while it appears to be doubly curved, the strips are all flat, un-bent and rectangular in shape. The plywood strips are connected to notches on an array of CNC-milled supporting arches. The heights of the individual strips vary according to their overlap, which allows for the optimization of material usage The resulting expressive shape forms an eye-catching frame and a backdrop for the presenter, while being a simple structural implementation using minimal amount of CNC-milling.  

The outside of the pavilion is clad with a three-dimensional wood texture. The structured paneling is a new product innovation by Jukola Industries, called Grafwood. The texture invites passers-by to touch and feel the unusual material. The appearance light and shadows on the dark façade lives with the rhythm of the day and weather conditions.

The construction of the pavilion took eight days from a group of architecture students, and it was built off-site and brought to location on a truck. The pavilion is a temporary construction, scheduled to remain in its location until the end of 2016 as part of the city’s project to liven up one of the central streets of Tampere".

 

Shape To Fabrication conference in London

Shape To Fabrication
Stratford Circus, London (UK)
April 19-20, 2016

The Shape To Fabrication conference focuses on cutting-edge technology, innovative construction, and applications in architecture, engineering and design. This years speakers are shaping the future, unafraid to push technology and engineering to new heights.

We live in an unprecedented time. An age where buildings are moving, jewelry is printed, clothes are sprayed on, facades are folded by robots, and cars are made of textile. We are proud to present to you the brave few, the first to use such pioneering technologies to create these magical experiences.

Discover the latest avant-garde projects from an international panel of presenters.

Save the date for the Grasshopper User Group Meeting – April 18, 2016 at the same location. More details to follow.

Rhino and Grasshopper at the Smartgeometry Conference in Gothenburg

The next Smartgeometry Conference (sg2016) will take place at the Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, April 4-9, 2016.

The idea behind Smartgeometry (founded in 2001 as a partnership between Practice, Research and Academia) is to intelligently explore and investigate the potential of mathematics and algorithms in design, engineering and architecture to propose innovative procedures from design to production.

Hybrid Domains- Architecture as interdisciplinary practice is this year’s topic. In addition to presentations of international keynote speakers, related workshop clusters will be held.

Will Pearson, developer at Robert McNeel & Associates, will be present at the Calibrated Modelling of Form-Active Hybrid Structures cluster together with Daniel Piker, developer of KangarooPhysics.

Also, PhD candidate Stephanie Chaltiel of the Innochain Network will be one of the tutors at the Mud, Textiles, and Robots for Large Structures cluster. McNeel Europe is the industrial partner of the Innochain Network.

New Lynda course: Architecture Site and Envelope

Dave 'Professor3D' Schultze announced his ninth online course for lynda.com, Rhino Project: Architecture Site and Envelope. At 1 hour 12 minutes long, this course is a lunch-hour / project-focused format, designed to be used in one sitting.

Use this 12-video course to advance your Rhino modeling and workflow skills. Students will first create their site topography with lofting and contours. They will build the building envelope with walls and a foundation, then later with floors and stairs. Dave shows quick ways to build glass curtain walls and move openings like doors and windows on the fly. He also provides tips and tricks for a faster, more efficient workflow in Rhino.

More information...

AA Visiting School: Haiti 2016

AA Visiting School: Haiti

July 30-August 11, 2016

This Architectural Associate workshop is pioneering a new method of designing and testing bamboo structures using Rhino, Grasshopper, and various plugins. The workshop explores bamboo as a fast-growing source of low cost, lightweight, and flexible construction material.

The course will include site mapping and community discussion, physical and computer modeling, and a bamboo material and construction workshop. As they refine the structures, the participants will also use climate, structural, and wind testing software.

More information...

Tensile fabric structures at Google

SEFAR Architecture TENERA Fabric

Google Tech Corners in Sunnyvale, CA, needed shade for the central plaza of Google's recent campus expansion. With the help of MPanel in Rhino a design of several hundred triangles fitted on a large curved steel trellis was worked out. The project required nine distinct triangle shapes of TENARA Fabric to fit within the steel geometry. Each triangle had to be within 1.5 inches of the connector hubs when fully tensioned.

MPanel incorporates a set of design tools in an interface to assist tensile fabric structure designers. MPanel works as a floating toolbar inside Rhino 4 or 5. With MPanel you can manipulate your CAD drawing, from the initial relaxation of a mesh to the final production panels that are sent to your plotter or cutter.

Architect: Valerio Dewalt Train Associates
Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Installer: Duvall Design Inc.

More info in an AECCafe article...

Rhino for Rapid Prototyping workshop in London

Rhino for Rapid Prototyping

FabLab London, UK

May 30-31

Bryan Oknyansky has organized a 2-day workshop on Rapid Prototyping.

This course will teach you how to incorporate the various requirements of different prototyping technologies into your design process in Rhino. Learn simple tasks ranging from analyzing the prototyping health of your model to more complex tasks like designing support structures and nesting 3-D parts for cost-effective prototyping. This two-day course will show you an advanced side of Rhino that bridges the gap from what you see on screen to holding it in your hands (if the prototype fits in them!)

Whatever you plan to prototype, Bryan will teach you how to:

• orient models for prototyping with 3D printers and CNC machines
• analyze model properties to increase chances of prototyping success the first time
• import vendor templates to organize model parts for export
• export your model parts in various file types
• use Rhino's mesh tools to optimize parts for production

Complete details and registration...

Check all other workshops by Bryan on Rhino, Grasshopper, prototyping, architecture, interior design, and fashion here.

Rhino for Footwear workshop in London

Rhino for Footwear workshop
FabLab London, UK
June 6-8

Bryan Oknyansky has organized a 3-day workshop in Footwear Design.

By the end of this course, you will be able to develop products designed for cemented, Goodyear welted, vulcanized or alternative manufacturing methods suitable for high-volume, Made To Order and bespoke levels of manufacturing.

Covering a wide range of topics, this course is suitable for the following footwear industry areas of expertise: 

•    Design

•    Product development

•    Lastmaking

•    Mold making (tooling up)

•    Grading

•    Pattern making

•    Technical drawing

•    Maquette making

Complete details and registration...

Check all other workshops by Bryan on Rhino, Grasshopper, prototyping, architecture, interior design, and fashion here.

Integrating Isogeometric Analysis - PhD research project at the ITKE Stuttgart within the Innochain Network

McNeel Europe is the industrial partner of the Innochain Network, a shared research training environment linking academia with industry in architecture and construction. The program is funded by the European Union's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement, allowing 15 interdisciplinary researchers to work simultaneously on compatible projects across three core packages.

As part of the Communicating Design package, Innochain researcher Evy L.M. Slabbinck is working on the Integration of Isogeometric Analysis. Her PhD research at the Institute for Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE), University of Stuttgart, is supervised by Prof. Knippers and in collaboration with BIG and McNeel Europe.

-Abstract-

Isogeometric analysis is an emerging technology driven by the present gap between the simulation of structural analysis and design software. This newly developed computational method is a new approach to Finite Element Method, taking non-approximated geometry into consideration by using conventional NURBS-based CAD models. The isogeometric concept of using the same basis for geometry and analysis, capable of exactly representing the geometry, enables a higher level of communication and integration. The research aims at the integration of Isogeometric Analysis in today’s CAD packages and exploring its potential for architectural design culture.

AA Visiting School: LA Experiential, July 2016

Escape Velocity. Image credit: Matt Silverman

AA Visiting School: L.A. Experiential

Poetic Kinetics

21-30 July 2016

Los Angeles is the world’s entertainment capital. Year-round music festivals provide a constant testing ground for creators and innovators to premiere installations.

Los Angeles Visiting School will integrate technology, engineering, and architecture replicating the environment in which architecture and entertainment work together to create unique experiences.

Inspired by the fast-paced entertainment industry, the AA Visiting School will ask students to design a kinetic structure for a festival of their choosing. Poetic Kinetics will share their expertise in generating large-scale kinetic structures from design to build to delivery.

The Visiting School will have two stages: The design stage and the construction stage. In the second stage, the students will take part in the construction of the design selected by a jury.

Details and registration...

LayerClasses - Assign Rhino objects to a specific class

LayerClasses, a little plugin that provides you with the possibility to assign any Rhino object to a specific class.

Important: The plugin currently only works with the WIP versions of Rhino for Windows (6.0 or later) and Mac (5.2 or later). To download the WIP version for Windows, please contact McNeel Support. More information on downloading WIP for Mac is available here.

Using this plugin, you can build a two-dimensional logic. For example, create layers like "Floor1", "Floor2", "Floor3" and classes like "Windows", "Doors" etc.

Features:

• Add and remove custom classes
• Show/hide objects in specific classes
• Select an object in a specific class
• Available in English and German

Download LayerClasses from food4Rhino

Remote control for Grasshopper

NBBJ Digital Practice has a very nice option for the remote control of Grasshopper.

Human UI - named after the author Andrew Heumann - is a new interface paradigm for Grasshopper. Use Human UI to create professional looking Grasshopper apps with custom user interfaces -- without writing any code.

 More info and download links .... 

Ivy - Mesh analysis, partitioning and unrolling in Grasshopper

Ivy is a plugin for mesh analysis, partitioning, and unrolling inside the Grasshopper environment.

Ivy uses notions and algorithms from Graph Theory and applies them to mesh geometry exploration. To enable the use of graph theory specific algorithms, a new custom data type was created.

The MeshGraph is an abstract construct that combines the geometric characteristics of the mesh with sets of linked data containers.

The data containers that can be visualized as the mesh faces are the nodes of the graph and the links between them are the graph edges.

The graph edges can be visualized as the mesh topological edges.

Download Ivy from food4Rhino

SFMOMA Expansion opening May 14th

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's (SFMOMA) building expansion is opening May 14, 2016.

Oslo-based Snohetta designed this 10-story building for SFMOMA. And local Kreysler & Associates fabricated the contoured and rippled facade.

The project is ground-breaking is several ways. Unconventional and innovative methods were used for the fabrication. The composite panels are a fire-resistant design and ultra-light. And the facade panels are now the largest architectural application of composites technology in the United States.

Each composite facade panel is different, so Kreysler & Associates relied heavily on digital fabrication with Rhino and Grasshopper to mold the unique shapes.

Kreysler specializes in composites and digital fabrication. They often work with artists and architects on large sculptural works, acoustic surfaces, facade panels, and replicas of historic building elements for restoration projects.

"Leading up to this project, our in-house R&D pertaining to fire resistant composites has opened the door to more widespread use of these materials in the future. The whole process has relied heavily on our facility with software -- in our case Rhino -- for early conversations with the designers all the way through construction coordination, in-house fabrication, production tracking, and quality control."

"Rhino is like our 'digital pocket knife'. It's intuitive, inexpensive, adaptable, and has a huge community of users for support and developing custom tools. Nearly every project we do sees Rhino at one point or another." - Comments from Bill Kreysler, in an interview in NOVEDGE blog.

Construction details...