Elefront Deconstruct Block

Has Elefront’s “Deconstruct Block” component in GH been removed in a newer version? We’ve received a software update and a lot of my GH definitions are now broken. I also see no new way of directly referencing block instances like before. It’s totally impractical to select from a list of names. I need direct select with the mouse from Rhino, like any crv of brep, etc.

If anyone knows the last version of Elefront where this was possible, please let us know, so we can downgrade and save our workflows.

Hi sorry for not seeing this sooner. This should all be possible. “Deconstruct Block” has been changed to “Explode Block”, but there is also a “Get Block Info” component now. This is so you can get information like the block’s name or plane without having to also generate all the exploded geometry. To reference block instances, you should use the “Extended Geometry” Param, and then you can right click and select things as usual.

Quick note, we haven’t yet worked out a bug where that selection is internalized in the param. Another option is to use the GUID param, select your objects, then pass those Guids into the Extended Geometry Param.

Hope that helps.

Thank you for replying. I did find the “Explode Block” component, however the output seems different to what it was before, and I couldn’t use it (?).

I’ve reverted to using the legacy components, which thankfully is still possible. They are marked with a “6” in GH.

It is slightly different in that it returns the Transform instead of the Plane. This is because if you have mirrored block instances, the Base Plane does not account for that. In other words, if you tried to match another block to it by orienting it to the Base Plane, it would not also mirror that block. The Transform accounts for all transformations.

That said, if you did want to keep using the eleFront 5 (the newer version), and you need the base plane, you could either use the Transform on a WorldXY plane, or you can use the Get Block Info component, which gives you all kinds of info about the block without also having to generate the exploded geometry (this will run way faster).

Red Rectangles: Differences b/w eleFront 4 and eleFront 5, and where that information is

Blue Rectangles: Notice how eleFront 5 is about 40% faster in deconstructing/exploding, but more importantly, if you only need Information about the block, and not the actual geometry, the Get Block Info component is about 100x faster since it’s not dealing with the geometry.

Hope that helps!

Also would be interested to know why you say you can’t use it? I would double check that you’re using the eleFront Explode Block since there are other plugins that have components with the same name.