Bake curves with decorations (aka 'vectors')

Grasshopper
1

I would like to bake vectors from Grasshopper. However, since Grasshopper doesn’t allow this, the two workarounds I can see are:

Option 1. Bake a curve. When this is done manually, there is the decoration option ‘ArrowAtEnd’. Once baked, the object is a curve and the visibility of the arrow can be cotrolled via the ‘Arrowhead’ command (not on menu).

Decorations
Decorations2527×1242 142 KB

Vector
Vector1872×1155 40.9 KB

But is there a way to apply a decoration using Rhino 8’s cache component, instead of manually baking it with the correct settings?

Option 2. Bake a leader without text. This is possible within Grasshopper, but working with leaders, instead of curves, potentially adds more complexity downstream.

Leader
Leader1602×592 51 KB

Any thoughts on how to get decorations in Grasshopper, and if you think that is the best option?

3

Unfortunately right now Option 1 is not available through ‘Model Object’ and ‘Content Cache’.

Option 2, the leader could be a workaround, but the curve can only be a polyline or a degree 3 spline, and should be planar. On the other side you can customize the arrow size and shape.

4

A python script after the cache component will run whenever the cache is updated and can add the arrowhead to the model curve.

image
image1405×732 126 KB

add_arrow.gh (11.4 KB)

3 Likes
5

That is great. Thank you.