ShapeDiver plugin v1.6

The new version of the ShapeDiver plugin is now available!

One of the new features is the gITF Exporter for Rhino. gITF has become the standard format for displaying geometry online. It loads fast and is widely compatible with online 3D technologies. It is the first gITF exporter for Rhino and it is compatible with version 5, version 6, and with your Grasshopper definitions.

Another interesting feature is the Geometry Gym Integration. GeometryGym is a popular plugin for the AEC users to simplify interoperability between Rhino+Grasshopper and other software packages used in the industry such as Revit and ARCHICAD.

Here is a few of the other updates rolled out with this new plugin:

• Support for the Dendro plugin: Dendro is a popular plugin for volumetric modeling in Grasshopper. Download the plugin and check out an example model on ShapeDiver.
• New export formats: The ShapeDiver export components now support one additional geometry format (OBJ) and three other text-based formats (XML, JSON, and of course, IFC).
• New helper component for extracting mesh UVs: A simple but crucial operation not natively available in Grasshopper.
• Support for polyline JSON data output.

Get more information and download...

Emarf - A new furniture design service that uses Grasshopper to create customizable templates

Vuild (Kawasaki, Japan) released Emarf, a new web service that allows anyone to customize furniture characteristics by interactively changing parameters through their web app. The design updates in real time on the screen. Once you decide on the parameters, you can export your design as CAM data that can be sent directly to a ShopBot machine at any of the studios Vuild partners with for CNC milling. You can then have your furniture delivered or you can pick it up at the studio.

You can also create Emarf templates by uploading Grasshopper files with their original components. The plugin for this is available on food4Rhino.

The service is currently only available in Japan, but Vuild is considering expanding it worldwide and is looking for partners.

Details...

For more information, feedback, and questions, please contact Vuild.

Wallacei update

Wallacei has a new version for solving optimization problems.

Use Wallacei, a plugin for Grasshopper, to run simulations through genetic algorithms for solving optimization problems.

In version 2.5, the Wallacei update has several new features, including a new clustering method (agglomerative hierarchical clustering), an autosave feature, Pareto front calculation for the entire population, streamlined performance, and more. Also, the Wallacei primer has been updated.

Visit Wallacei to download the primer and learn more about the new features in the latest version of Wallacei.

Visit YouTube: Wallacei Version 2.5 New Features...

New - KeyShot 9 for Rhino Video

In this video, Phil Cook from Simply Rhino takes a look at KeyShot 9. KeyShot is an easy to use, photorealistic renderer without a steep learning curve.

This new version of KeyShot, version 9, features many enhancements and new features.

For this video Phil has chosen five of these new KeyShot features that may be the most interesting to Rhino users. These are:

• Fuzz (Pro version only)
• Denoise
• GPU Rendering
• Real Cloth (Pro version only)
• Model Library

As well as introducing the new features, there is a short tutorial on modeling a tennis ball in Rhino and rendering this in KeyShot using the new Fuzz material. There is also a breakdown of the hardware requirements for GPU rendering.

Please note that this video is made with pre-release versions of KeyShot 9. Some features may be improved in the shipped product.

Black Friday McNeel Miami 2019

50% off VOD videos for Black Friday!

Enjoy 50% off on all McNeel Miami's Vimeo On Demand (VOD) videos with code: BLKFRIDAY 

Offer valid November 26-December 3, 2019.

Our selection includes:

• NEW Rhino 6 Básico training in Spanish
• NEW Rhino 6 Intermedio training in Spanish/
• SudoHopper3D in Spanish
• SudoHopper3D in English
• RhinoCAM in Spanish
• Rhino 5 102 training in Spanish
• Grasshopper 101 training in Spanish
• Grasshopper 102 training in Spanish
• Rhino Visual Tips 5 in English

Also, enjoy 50% off on Grasshopper 101 and 102 training in English!

Code: BLKFRIDAY

• Introduction to Grasshopper
• Grasshopper Intermediate

Rhino and Grasshopper courses are prerecorded videos from past online courses. 

When you purchase, you can stream the videos for 1 year. 
Offer valid November 26-December 3, 2019.

For more information, contact Lucia Nasser.

What is RhinoFabStudio? A 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.

Songbird - Parametric multiscale fretboard generator for Rhino

Luthiers rejoice - Songbird is a parametric multiscale fretboard generator for Rhino. 

You can use it to generate fanned fretboards for guitars, mandolins, bass guitars, ukuleles, or whatever instrument you want to cook up. It also generates standard single scale, non-fanned fretboards just as easily. Simply input the same scale length for both first and last string. The plugin exposes a single command called fretboard.

Songbird is free. Download it on food4Rhino!

Grasshopper workshop in Barcelona by ADDA-LAB

A 3-day Grasshopper Introductory workshop by ADDA-Lab in Barcelona, November 27-29.

Contact info@paramdigma.com to register!

archEatable, A journey through architecture and pâtisserie

The Architecture Department of The American University in Dubai presents archEatable, A journey through architecture and pâtisserie, an innovative course created by the Associate Professor of Architecture and Authorized Rhino Trainer, Jose A. Carrillo.

archEatable is an unconventional class that explores the limits of education in architecture through a unique and disruptive approach in the teaching of digital design tools such as Rhino/Grasshopper and fabrication techniques. It is also an opportunity to collaborate with professionals from diverse disciplines with compatible design processes and a chance to interact with students and faculty from other departments at AUD.

archEatable focuses on a crossed relationship between architecture and the world of gourmet pastry in Haute Pâtisserie. Twelve students were asked to design unique pieces and edible works of art. The course incorporates novel 3D-printed prototyping, silicone molds, and laser cutters into the process to create stunningly unique geometric cakes.

Jose A. Carrillo bases his research on professional emerging practices and current teaching in architecture. It deepens the strategies to create new scenarios supported by emerging technological advances and unique techniques associated with digital design and fabrication processes.

More information and final results...

New: ExpressMarine Interface to ShipConstructor

Use the ExpressMarine plugin for Rhino to rapidly build parametric 3D models of marine structures such as decks, bulkheads, floors, frames, stiffeners, cutouts. Change the parameters, your model automatically changes.

Now, with the new interface in ExpressMarine Version 3, you can model the vessel's structure in ExpressMarine and export the result to ShipConstructor, saving hours of work. Early testing shows that by using ExpressMarine to initialize your ShipConstructor model, 300 hours of work can be reduced to just 20!

More information on ExpressMarine to ShipConstructor...

Deciduous, a 3D printed pavilion by MEAN*

Deciduous is a 3D printed pavilion designed using Rhino and Grasshopper. It invites us to revisit our relationship with nature, through an experience reminiscent of walking through an abstracted botanical form.

Building on MEAN’s experiments with 3D printing in design, the pavilion is an exploration in scaling processes to the architectural realm.

Deciduous is composed of a hybrid of three different sustainable materials: CNC-milled Birch plywood flooring, Robotically 3D-Printed Concrete Base, and a series of branching 3D-Printed PETG stems, a plastic polymer upcycled from 30,000 discarded water bottles.

In light of Dubai’s focus on 3D printing as a sustainable technology, the hybridization of state-of-the-art robotic 3D printing in plastic and concrete is a first attempt to explore the possibilities that the two technologies can offer, contributing to the emirate’s vision of ecological construction growth towards 2025.

Computational modeling was used to conceive and quantify the design to a level of detailing optimal within the parameters and constraints of large-format robotic 3D printing. Deciduous is completely prefabricated off-site. The parts can be mechanically joined on a clean site with no need for heavy machinery.

The term deciduous refers to trees that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn. Celebrating this year’s Art Nights event at DIFC with the theme Autumn, Deciduous entices us to ask ourselves, what does autumn mean to Dubaians today?

Grasshopper and V-Ray work at KPF

Henry Winchester of the Chaos Group interviewed KPF’s Director of Applied Research, Cobus Bothma, on Grasshopper and V-Ray.

Grasshopper’s capabilities have changed the way KPF designs. And now, with the advent of V-Ray for Grasshopper, it’s possible to render directly from Grasshopper.

Read about what Rhino is good for and not so good for and how V-Ray works with that.

What is V-Ray for Grasshopper? KPF Reveals the Magic...

The Generation Game - Emerging tools in AEC

From the article: Digital rendering of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Gehry

AEC Magazine provides a little AEC history and thought in this article: How design and documentation are changing. How 3D and digital fabrication play into our current software. How we are entering a disruptive phase. Where the AEC industry is headed.

Read The Generation Game...

Creative Robotics Workshop in Mexico

Join Karl Singline, Luis Pacheco, and Andres Gonzalez at Creative Robotics Workshop, an intensive five-day workshop in León, Mexico.  

Creative Robotics workshops aim to investigate the state-of-the-art application of robotics at various scales. Students will be introduced to emergent technologies and methodologies such as parametric design and control of a KUKA industrial robotic arm using tools such as Rhino, Grasshopper, and KUKA|prc.

Andres Gonzalez, RhinoFabStudio's worldwide director, will be doing a presentation on Rhino and a sneak peek on Rhino 7 WIP on Monday, January 13, 2020, at 11:00 am. Robotics and parametric design presentations follow.

Spaces are limited. Register now!

Date: January 13-17, 2020
Time: 9 am-4 pm 
Place: Parque Tecnológico CIEN
Av. Eugenio Garza Sada, León, México
Cost:  Mex$ 8,500 -Early bird price until November 30, 2019
          Mex$ 12,000  -After November 30, 2019 

For more information, please visit this link.

What is RhinoFabStudio? A 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.

Programmed Deformation V2.0 workshop in Bucharest

Programmed Deformation V2.0

Textile 3D Printing Workshop

Bucharest

February 29-March 4

A complex articulated equilibrium in the form of tridimensional curvature patterns is delineated through the interaction between two divergent material behaviors: On the one hand, the stored elastic energy of stretched textiles. On the other hand, the stiffness of a thermoplastic polymer distributed heterogeneously through 3D printed algorithmically generated patterns. The two material components form a hybrid system with a smooth aesthetic appearance, inherent material efficiency, and structural stability.

The underlying concept behind tension-active structures is to store energy in the textile material before 3D printing and then release that energy to affect the form and function.

Through digital material behavior simulations as well as large scale prototyping the workshop will bridge the gap between digital and physical. It will provide participants with insights into the behavior of tension-active structures.

The workshop will introduce the principles behind tension-active structures in a fabrication-oriented environment. The participants will learn how to digitally simulate the behavior in the Grasshopper, Kangaroo plugin. The participants will then fabricate their designs on a large Delta Wasp 3MT 3D printer with a maximum build volume of 1m x 1m x 1m and receive real-world feedback for their designs.

What you will learn:

• Tension-active structures behavior simulation
• Real-world fabric and tension simulation
• 3D printing with a large format Delta Wasp
• Large scale 3D printing on stretched textiles
• Robotic 3D printing designing with Grasshopper
• Physics simulations with Grasshopper

More information and registration...

Rhino.Inside.Revit video tutorials by Gavin Crump

Gavin Crump, BIM Manager at Crone Architects, is raving about Rhino.Inside—and producing a series of tutorials on bridging Rhino and Revit together.

Using Grasshopper in Revit is a massive breakthrough for computational designers. Rhino.Inside.Revit gives you access to Rhino/Grasshopper within Revit. 

In this first tutorial, Gavin covers accessing Revit elements via Grasshopper, then baking them into a Rhino model.

More tutorials are in Gavin's future agenda, including reading and setting parameter values in Revit. 

You can download Rhino.Inside (free if you have a Rhino 6 license).

Rhino Inside: Revit Elements into Rhino (Part 1)

MeasureXL: New Portable CMM Digitizer

Traditionally, reverse engineering packages consisting of hardware and software have been quite expensive. What’s special about MeasureXL is that it is fully integrated with Rhino 6 for Windows to create an affordable Scan to CAD solution. 

Build CAD models fast! Data taken from MeasureXL shows up immediately inside Rhino to create accurate CAD models in lesser time than designing them from scratch.

Watch the demo!

MeasureXL portable CMM consists of a wireless probe and a factory-calibrated optical tracker for an out of the box accurate tracking experience. There’s no need to calibrate the unit, which makes it easy to set up and start taking measurements. The 3D digitizer measures wirelessly. It doesn’t have any movement restrictions compared to traditional portable CMMs with articulated arms. MeasureXL uses a probe, so it is not affected by environmental conditions such as lighting.

Details... 

ROB|ARCH 2020 | September @ Beijing | CALL FOR PAPERS

ROB|ARCH 2020

September 1-5, 2020

Beijing, China

Call for Papers

The ROB|ARCH 2020 Conference on Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art, and Design takes place in September 2020 in Beijing, China.

Now in its eighth year, with successful events in Vienna, Ann Arbor, Sydney, and Zurich, this year ROB|ARCH 2020 is cohosted by Tsinghua University in cooperation with the Beijing Design Week. 

You can submit a scientific paper!

The theme of this year’s conference and workshops is On-Site Robotics—a broad term referring to the creative use of automated systems to perform tasks in construction.

This wide array includes, but is not limited to, industrial robotic arms, drone systems, walking robotic systems, autonomous rover platforms, and 3D printing solutions. This extends to the vast underlying technologies used to drive these digital design technologies, including computational and parametric design, artificial intelligence, machine learning, human-machine collaboration, and network digital streams.

Deadline dates

January 9, 2020: Abstract Submission (optional)
February 9, 2020: Full Paper Submission

Submission guidelines and detailed information... 

New 3D people by Humano3D

Want to make your images more realistic than ever before?

New 3D people are now available by Humano3D.

The new Humano3D collections are:

• Realistic and natural
• Affordable and easy to use
• Available in packages of Elegant 3D people or Casual 3D people
• Or you can buy single models

Check them out!

What software does Zaha Hadid Architects use?

What software does Zaha Hadid Architects use? Find out in this Chaos Group article. The list is long but Grasshopper is a major player. 

Read about it or listen to the podcast...

Proving Ground's Rhino to Revit tools

Proving Ground's Conveyor leverages OpenNURBS to import complex Rhino 6 shapes into Revit—fast!

Some of the largest and most innovative firms in the US have adopted the Conveyor framework to streamline their design workflow.

• Built for Rhino 6. Extensively leverages OpenNURBS to minimize licensing constraints on most workflows. 
• Workflow for any skill level. UI designed for non-computational experts. Also includes extensible tools for advanced workflows.

Read more about Proving Ground and Conveyor...

Wabentheke - a project by FH Aachen students

The Wabentheke project is part of a project series by FH Aachen, in the field of building construction.

Students are experimenting with new manufacturing technologies (large format 3D printing) to manufacture a 1:1 object, in this case, a bar counter with complex geometry.

Complete case study here (in German)...

Rhino.Inside® brings the power of Rhino to BricsCAD® BIM V20

Bricsys®, a Hexagon company, has partnered with Robert McNeel & Associates of Seattle, Washington, to leverage their Rhino.Inside® initiative. Bricsys is using Rhino.Inside® to bring the full power of the Rhinoceros NURBS modeler to BricsCAD® BIM V20.

Rhino integration enables a new workflow that fills the gap between early-stage conceptual design and Building Information Modeling. Using Rhino’s built-in Grasshopper visual programming language, users can create parametric concept models inside of BricsCAD® BIM.

"Algorithmic modeling tools are often used in the conceptual design phase before BIM tools are involved in the design process. The BricsCAD–Grasshopper connection bridges this gap. Then, using the A.I. functionality in BricsCAD BIM, it’s simple to convert the Rhino model into a full BIM in just a few seconds," commented Tiemen Strobbe, BIM Product Owner at Bricsys®.

Once a design concept is approved, the Rhino model can be “baked” in BricsCAD® BIM, generating native BricsCAD® geometry. This geometry can be converted into a full BIM model, including automatic classification of model elements, using BIMIFY, and the automatic attachment of compositions using the AUTOMATCH tool.

Read the complete press release here...

Training for Trainers Workshop - Barcelona, 26-27 November 2019

 

Training for Trainers Workshop
26-27 November 2019
McNeel Europe
Barcelona

Expert users of Rhino that want to get accredited as Authorized Rhino Trainers now have a chance to participate in this certification workshop that will take place at McNeel Europe in Barcelona.

To know more about the Rhino Authorized Training Program, click here...

Price of the course: €295 (+ taxes).

Seats are very limited. Sign up now!

More information...

Urbano for urban mobility simulations

Just released! Urbano for mobility modeling and simulation in Rhino and Grasshopper.

Understand the consequences of your design choices of the street network.  

Urbano is a new urban design tool that models active mobility and evaluates access to amenities, streets, and public spaces. 

• Download geospatial data. Download maps and points-of-interest data from OpenStreetMaps directly in Grasshopper.
• Import your data. Parse and import layers of existing state information from OSM or shapefiles.
• Look up and change Metadata. Attach Metadata, then look it up and customize parametrically.
• Preprocess and build a mobility model. Automate mobility modeling steps, including creating a topological street network and generating each building's access point to streets.
• Find routes in different modes. Find routes between origin and designation buildings using different transit modes, such as pedestrians or cars.
• Run mobility simulation with TripEngine. 
• Analyze amenities and streets. Compute various metrics in urban analysis, including Streetscore, Amenityscore, and Walkscore.
• Integrate CAD workflow. Bake model geometry with Metadata to Rhino. Work seamlessly with other visualization components.

More information on Urbano or food4Rhino...

Color coding groups fast in Grasshopper

Are you spending too much time fiddling around with group colors in Grasshopper? If you are color coding your Grasshopper groups according to function you either: 

1. Know all your favorite colors' RGB values by heart. 
2. Accept that your color coding is not perfect, but close. 

Both solutions can be time-consuming, and neither are good.

These are concerns of Timo Harboe Nielsen from BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group. He has now played with the Grasshopper API and made a script that colors groups based on group names. For example, if a group contains the word Input, the group color will be green.

Find out more and download the free script...

Planning tool for designers and owners

Jeremy Graham, from HDR, is developing a planning tool and Rhino plugin for bubble diagrams.

It's another innovative computational design tool to make better and more informed decisions earlier in the design process.

More information and demo on his LinkedIn page...