Announcement! New and improved Grasshopper docs website

Grasshopper
1

Hi all, I’m happy to announce the new and improved Grasshopper Docs website.

Whats New:

  • Updated for GH 1.0 in Rhino 6
  • Around 120 addons are now in the system. New: Pufferfish, Parakeet, Crane, Dendro, Starfish, Duck, Peacock, Owl and many more.
  • Homepage now displays just the addon toolbars for a helicopter view
  • Homepage shows addons categorized for easy discovery and exploration
  • Rollover a component to see its name in a tooltip
  • Addon pages are improved and show addon metadata and breadcrumbs
  • Complete display of all input & output params of addons and user objects

Feedback that I need from you!

  • Features that you’d like to see? (video tutorials, better integration with GH/Food4Rhino, etc)
  • Addons that you’d like featured on the site?

This is what the new Homepage looks like:

image
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This is what the Pufferfish page looks like.

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image1920×969 446 KB

Current suggestions:

  • ✓ Add author names and brief description of each addon
  • ✓ Hide obsolete components
  • □ Add link to the source code repo (if any)
  • □ Add installation instructions
  • □ Add multimedia showing what the addon does (and video tutorials)
  • □ Add a search feature (search by name, search by inputs/outputs)
  • □ Show similar/related components even from other addons
38 Likes
2

Looks very good, thanks for sharing!
I see you are a software developer, but what kind of work do you do with Rhino if I may ask?

1 Like
3

Very nice @Robinicks!
I like the new overview on the home page. The previous one took some time to load.
This one is perfect!
I wouldn’t change the integration with food4rhino - download links are quite enough.

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4

Not all hero’s wear capes. Thanks!

6 Likes
5

Great, thanks!

My feedback:

  • In the plugin page, I miss the plugin description and info like website, author… Could you get access the GH_AssemblyInfo or there is a way to edit your plugin details from github ?
  • In the plugin page, the font name should be bigger and to be before the component ribbon, IMO.
  • In GH, the Help tab in the file toolbar should link this page.
  • Add multimedia to show what the plugin does.
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6

Great work! I noticed that the documentation is showing the deprecated components, is that a choice? In the case of our plugin (ShapeDiver), it makes things a little confusing.

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7

Hi @mathieu1 Thanks for reporting this. We already suppress components that are obviously obsolete (if they are named as such) but I have yet to read the visibility attributes of each component to suppress the deprecated ones. Could you give me the names of one or two of the components that you consider obsolete to make it easier for me?

8

@Gijs Nothing major. Just some hobby projects. I’ve primarily been involved with Grasshopper so most of my work is GH centric. Besides, Rhino already has a good documentation portal and not sure if I can contribute anything in that regard.

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9

Got it, I thought it was entirely automated. At the moment, the only way to detect obsolete components in our plugin is that the exposure is set to hidden. If you are doing some manual checking regarding component names, we’ll make sure to rename the old ones with an “Obsolete” prefix/suffix.

A couple of examples:
http://rhino.github.io/components/shapediver/customMaterial.html
http://rhino.github.io/components/shapediver/customMaterialExternalGeometry.html
http://rhino.github.io/components/shapediver/material.html
http://rhino.github.io/components/shapediver/textureMaterial.html

In general, I think it would be good to detect hidden components and omit them, as there might be other reasons than obsolescence why the developers want to hide them. But that is probably debatable.

10

Hi, the process is entirely automated. I’m able to access all the metadata from addons and user objects just like the GH application does. Its just the indexing script that is new so that might need some fine-tuning, as you have reported. I’ll see what I can do in regard to hiding hidden components.

11

Fantastic! Well done.

1 Like
12

@mathieu1 All done. We now suppress obsolete and hidden components as far as we can detect. Please check the site now?

@Dani_Abalde Lots of requests I see!

  1. The author info and font changes are done and live. The website link is not part of the addon metadata. If you want to see the complete addon metadata that we get, check the addons.json feed.
  2. Multimedia is a good idea but it will have to be collected manually. Do you want to help build this list? I have a starting point for video tutorials.
  3. I don’t control GH Application as I’m not the author. however I’ve messaged the authors for that.
13

It looks good now, thanks! Your responsiveness is much appreciated.

1 Like
14

Awesome.

Much better right? But the Component Index > PluginName box… I would solve the problem of returning to the index in another, much less prominent way and on top.

Isn’t it possible that the authors of the plugins have access via github?

Here you have my Peacock and PhylloMachine plugins with description, authorName and authorContact added.

{
  "name": "Peacock",
  "releaseDate": "2017-Nov-04",
  "version": "0.99.1",
  "downloadLink": "https://www.food4rhino.com/app/peacock",
  "helpLink": "https://rhino.github.io/addons/peacock.html",
  "category": "Jewelry Design",
  "isSystem": false,
  "components": 119,
  "description": Jewelry design for Grasshopper,
  "authorName": "Daniel Gonzalez Abalde",
  "authorContact": dga_3@hotmail.com
}

{
  "name": "Phyllomachine",
  "releaseDate": "2015-May-29",
  "version": "1",
  "downloadLink": "https://www.food4rhino.com/app/phyllomachine",
  "helpLink": "https://rhino.github.io/addons/phyllomachine.html",
  "category": "Biology & DNA",
  "isSystem": false,
  "components": 16,
  "description": Plant parametric design,
  "authorName": "Daniel Gonzalez Abalde",
  "authorContact": dga_3@hotmail.com
}
1 Like
15

Good idea, but the JSON is not used as an input. It is generated by the generator tool that builds the rest of the site. Our input is the raw GHA plugins and GHUSER components. And we have an excel for the metadata.

16

I added your details and filled in all the missing author info & addon descriptions. Most of these were user object collections that did not have any ability for authors to express these details, so I had to collect it manually. It will be live soon.

17

I noticed you have Pufferfish at V2.7, it is at V2.8 currently, not very important as I don’t want to take your time, just letting you know if the updating is easy :smiley:

Also, how is the component count generated, I noticed it says 207 for V2.7 but V2.7 was something like 280 (V2.8 is at 305).

18

Hi, it can be updated easily. A bigger issue is that if the count is wrong, it means that some components failed to index. Can you find one or two missing components on the Pufferfish page and tell me their names so I can investigate?

19

Ah, seems the entire “Twisted Box” tab is missing and everything related to Twisted Boxes like two components meant to be in Transform “Morph to Twisted Box” and “Transform Twisted Box”. I suspect this is because of the way those components reference Grasshoppers Transform assembly. (I know @mathieu1 had some issues with this also when initially getting Pufferfish onto ShapeDiver).

1 Like
20

I’ve been using this and find it very useful. The only upgrade I would like you to consider is to be able to roll over the component and see the component name show up. I have one definition I am trying to put together based on an image of the definition. One of the components is labeled “Pull” and I am unable to find one with matching inputs. By hovering the a component and have the name show up, I would have a much better chance of locating the ccorrect component. When double clicking and typing in “Pull”, two components show up, neither of which has matching inputs to the one on the definition image.

Regardless, the fully documented page is a huge step forward!

1 Like