I wasn´t able to find an answer to the following question so i´ll ask it here: am wondering if is possible to change many styles in the Styles dialog box at the same time? Or is there a better solution for my use case below?
I have a building made up out of 500 concrete sandwich panels with about 25 different shapes made from 1 grasshopper definition used as a vaElement. Now I would like modify the 25 different as follows:
add a Manufacturer to the 25 panels
fill out the material under the ‘physical’ tab
change the material of the panel on the outside
This now seems a very tedious process by clicking the 25 panels and filling out the information. Is there a better way?
Besides the above I would like to:
4. change functionality to the grasshopper definition and update all panels at the same time.
5. change the height of several panels at the same time.
I hope someone has an idea how to do this better. Am I missing something? Or are there features going to be added in the future to manage this?
Hi David,
Unfortunately, it is not possible to make a multiple selection of the styles from the styles manager dialog in order to change values simultaneously. This is planned for future versions. However:
You can add the parameter “Manufacturer” by Document. So all objects, including styles, will have this parameter to be filled with a specific value.
Using Grasshopper you should be able to assign values of custom paramters to multiple styles at once. However, while preparing an example of this I’ve figured out that there are a couple of bugs that make this not possible right now. I’ll let you know when we fix them.
You can assign a different material to each component of that Element style, after selecting the component, from the Attributes tab. But you need to have prepared the GH definition so it distrubutes the geometry into different Geometry Params, that later on VisualARQ recognizes as individual components in the final Element style. For example, take a look at other Element styles:
Yes. If you do right click on the Style’s name, from the styles dialog, you can open the new style wizard, reload the GH definition, and go on the steps to generate that style. The wizard will read the changes done in the GH file and will show those changes during the style edition process.
Yes, if this “height” parameter has been defined as “editable by Style”, you can change the value from the Styles dialog. If it was defined as “editable by Object”, then you can select different elements in the model, and change that parameter from the Properties panel.
Maybe I wasn’t specific enough with this question, but it was about the possibility of filling out the name of the manufacturer for 25 different styles at the same time. If your solution under point 2 would work that would be wonderful. I would also see several other solutions to make multiple presets of the panel, because in essence that is what i would like to do:
1.1. Be able to define the manufacturer within the grasshopper definition already. Than i would only need to reload the style.
1.2. Create the option for a ‘Master Style’ in which I would be able to set the manufacturer. In the normal styles themselves I would than be able to set the manufacturer field to ‘By Master Style’.
1.3. Maybe make it work like the presets of the steel beams? Where the manufacturer could already be filled out for 1 preset of beams, but many different sizes of this beam can be used in the document. This would really be very nice when possible!
1.4 Maybe presets is something that you already had an idea about? If so, could you please explain the solution for presets that you have in mind and maybe give an indication for when this can be expected to be used?
That would be a nice solution for now. Please let me know if the bugs are fixed.
Would I be able to set the material with your solution answer 2 as well? Or could my suggestion 1.1 or 1.2 or 1.3 maybe be a solution to set the material in the future?
I did figure out that I can reload the style from the grasshopper definition. And it is very nice that is picked up only the changes and that I don’t need to reset all the values. But maybe I wasn’t specific enough here. Could it be possible to reload all the 25 styles from the grasshopper definition at the same time?
Oke.
Thank you for your time and I’m looking forward for your answer.
The most straigh forward solution here would be that you could select multiple styles from the dialog, go to Parameters, and assign the value to the “Manufacturer” parameter, for all these styles at once. This is not currently possible but we will work on that in future versions.
1.1 This is not possible. The Grasshopper definition contains the geometry that will be used to generate a new style, but you can only assign additional data to that style afterward, once it is created. In other words, it is not possible to create a “Grasshopper style” inside Grasshopper. In any case, using the Update Property component you can reference existing styles in GH and assign a value for their custom parameters. (We are fixing a bug related to this though)
1.2 Well, this can be done if you manage one single style from that GH definition, and set more parameters that define the dimensions of the object as “editale by object”. Then you can have then multiple objects with different sizes all using the same style, and the same value for the custom parameter, taken by style. This custom parameters value can be overwritten by object instance as well.
1.3 This is something planned also for future versions. But it is not currently possible with objects created as “Grasshopper sytles”. I add your vote for this request.
1.4 In VisualARQ templates, there are already a few “Custom Parameters” created by Document (available in Rhino Options > Document Properties > Parameters). You can create new ones, and then go to the styles manager for different objects and assign values. You can then save that as a template, so you don’t need to repeat it eveytime you start a new project. These new custom paramters can also be created by object style, from the Paramters tab, inside the styles manager of each object type.
I’ll keep you posted.
The first comment on bullet point 1 here is the best solution: multiple selection of object styles to change attributes simultaneously. Consider also assigning the materials by layer and set the component to a specific layer, which might be a faster way to do handle this (like the Glass component in the screenshot)
That’s not possible. You cannot reload the same definition to all the styles that are using it at once.
Hello,
And this is why I ask for properties inheritance… With some dependencies (or parenting) you could assign data to various elements. Document properties are fine, but I don’t need all of them for all elements, ther could be zillions of them in a single document.
Cheers, Jaro
