Hi all,
I’m working on a small tool aimed at the gap between parametric facade design and what actually goes into fabrication or documentation. Wanted to get feedback from this community before going further, since you’re the people who’d actually use it (or tell me it’s pointless).
The idea:
• Take a panelized surface (your own logic, or generated in the tool)
• Assign hierarchical panel IDs tied to a constructive system (system / elevation / bay / panel) instead of flat numbering
• Run fabrication checks against configurable thresholds per system (unitized CW, rainscreen, GFRC, etc.)
• Export a clean panel schedule (CSV first, IFC on the roadmap)
• Auto-label panels in the drawing so the IDs in the model, schedule, and drawing all match
The point isn’t to replace Paneling Tools, that handles the geometry side well. It’s the data layer after panelization: how the output gets structured so it actually flows into fabrication and docs without manual rework.
What I’d like to hear:
Is this a real gap in your workflow, or am I solving something that’s already solved?
For those of you who do facade work professionally, what constructive system do you most often work in? I’d rather build the first version around one real case than guess at five.
What’s the minimum output that would make this useful enough to try? CSV + labeled DXF? IFC? Something else?
Plugin (.gha) vs. open Grasshopper definition, what would you actually install?
Happy to share progress as it develops, and equally happy to hear “this isn’t worth building.” Either answer saves me time.
Thanks.
Personally, related to this I did only a couple of projects with a client.
I’ve seen an office with 5+ engineers , each with a solidword or inventor licence, struggling to tackle this, roughly 2024.
They started doing this with grasshopper (so “programming” instead of “parametric”) and I went to help them.
We used their workflow, their rules, to respect their manufacturing methods.
Imo, a generic tool to cover different manufacturers is hard.
For me, even that single client had different internal methods, and they had to discuss many times what path to choose.
(the projects were about some double-curved facades… can’t share the details…)
Probably a person with many years of experience with different contexts and different clients can guess a more realistic answer.
I try to answer you, but keep in mind i’m VERY ignorant in this field. Absolutely.
My comment is probably useless.
Is this already solved? Yes and no.
Something surely exist, but it can’t cover all possible scenarios.
For what I did, something really useful was to shrink the total work time by automating the simpler panels (double curvature, pseudo-quadrilateral shape, pseudo-standard sizes and ratio)… the panels that were totally out-of-standard were still done mostly manually, but they were a dozen in total… while the automated panels were hundreds.
Better to have a fast and reliable tool that works for most of the panels, than a tool that try to cover every type of panels and exceptions but ultimately fails often.
We did .dxf + .csv … it was decently good. dxf for lasercut, csv for the angles to bend with the press or the radius of the calendered parts.
i did many moronic big grasshopper definitions (with many c# scripts), it worked, project closed, we forgot about everything, no documentation. The project was very specific so it was hard to re-use the code as whole. Probably in future for another project parts of the code could be re-used…
I am not in this field, my opinion and post value is little here.
