#data-flow

In this short tutorial, I am showing the essentials of data domains in Grasshopper. A domain is a data type in Grasshopper that represents a portion of the 1d or 2d number space. This requires a starting and ending point in those spaces. In 1d, these points are two numbers. Then, the domain represents all the numbers between them. In 2d, a data domain is represented by two coordinates (u, v). This presentation illustrates this concept with the area defined…

Data structures and data matching principles are important to be able to design with Grasshopper. In this tutorial, I show data matching procedures with arithmetic operations. Then I repeat them in the production of geometric objects. I think it should be easier to use this programming language once the students understand the basic principles. Therefore it would be easier to design with it. Sometimes the design process of these diagrams proceeds from left to right (by induction) but sometimes it…

We continue with the Grasshopper for Beginners series by explaining Rhino+Gh workflow principles. What does GH add to Rhino‘s standard drawing and modeling functions? To put the question differently, what does GH do that conventional modeling programs, such as Rhino, can’t? What is the difference and relationship between Rhino+Gh? Let’s take an example to answer these questions. Our example is about parametrically describing a surface model and deriving its alternatives. First, we will try to create a surface using only…

Let’s continue the Grasshopper for Beginners series. We start with the traditional “Hello World!” displayed on the Rhino screen: Placing the Components In most CAD programs, the text creation function, which is the equivalent of the Text command, is performed by a component called Text Tag (Tag) in GH. The Text Tag (Tag) component is in the Dimension panel under the Display tab. If you’re not comfortable with tabs and panels yet, you can revisit this section from the beginning….

We continue the Grasshopper for Beginners (2) series with the data flow programming concept. Control flow diagrams we use in traditional programming languages control the sequence of executed commands. In data flow diagrams, the focus is not on the order of commands but on how the data progresses. In the previous example, it doesn’t matter whether the Circle and Polyline command runs first. As a result, both are prerequisites for Extrude. Extrude command will not be executed until both are…

Here is a design exercise I’ve been giving to students. It aims to familiarize students with the concept of dataflow diagrams used in Grasshopper. Dataflow is a different concept than conventional computer programming. Here is a good comparison between control flow and dataflow languages. In most educational settings (such as courses and workshops) we concentrate on the fundamental issue of dataflow management via design projects. This requires us to think about a design exercise of dataflow diagrams. In the most…

This is done because I needed to represent relationships between different factors and layers of a design process. Although this method of “Chord Diagrams” is a very common technique in information design, it became very hard to find an effective tool for generating those diagrams quickly. There seem to be a solution called “Circos” but however, even installing it on the computer became very boring for me. So I decided to make a Grasshopper definition that generates simple circular relationship diagrams….

About to finish the well-defined section of this year’s Parametric Modeling course, here are the mid-term questions I’ve asked; First question checks if the curve < > point conversions are well understood in Grasshopper. Evaluating a parametric curve and generating the closest point from another curve. This also requires a basic understanding of the use of the Grasshopper interface. The second question was testing a basic and classical use of attractors on grids of objects. Students generated their own grids…

This is a great book, explaining very familiar concepts of dataflow diagrams for designers firsthand. Leveling is an interesting chapter there, I’m not sure if it completely fits with the use of “Clusters” in Grasshopper but it is obvious that the complex systems should be well organized not only to be perceptually “better” ones but also to develop a way to use parts of definitions again and again in different situations. …How do you actually DO the leveling of DFDs? The…

The famous “Deutsch limit” says, “you cannot have more than -say a hundred- components in a visual programming environment, that is why you cannot write an operating system with it.”; so it says, the perceptual and pedagogical advantages of visual programming are limited according to the size of your screen. However, there are two main oppositions to this argument. One of them says “textual programming environments have the same limitation, as you cannot have more than x lines of code…