Just a few question that may be resolved by RTFM, but I want to skip that.
First is nesting.
Two .3Dm projects.
car
seat
I want to nest (reference scene in Maya,Houdini, etc…) seat .3dm in car .3dm. In seat scene, the seat is at origin centered. In car scene it needs to be offset to side and back as needed. Plus I want to decouple work of each. Similar to SL assembly and part files. I am not a SolidWorks user, BTW.
Second is Grasshopper and parametric modeling with history.
So lets say, outside of Grasshopper, in Rhino, with history ON, I create circle and rectangle. Then curve boolean both. Then surface the resulting planar curve. The extrude the surface into a solid. Then fillet , chamfer, the solid edges. Then boolean a hole, with a cylinder.
Now how do I graph the procedure in Grasshopper?
This is about how things are done in Maya and Houdini.
I tried dragging the objects into Grasshopper.
I want to see and edit history of parametric model. I get that Rhino is not , to my limited knowledge, a parametric 3D modeler. But it has history feature.
for the first, sounds like you are looking for blocks; in car.3dm, type Insert, browse to seat.3dm, choose options for linking/embedding/etc – this will produce a block instance, which you can copy/move around the model as desired
choosing whether to link/embed/etc depends on your goals & workflow, and would probably involve reading the manual
Similar to what jdhill said above, the first situation is definitely a workflow for blocks. If you have a base point in seat.3dm that you know won’t change (let’s say, for example, the center point of the bolt hole pattern of the seat rails), you make that (0,0,0) in seat.3dm. In my experience I’d use the “Embedded and Linked” option when inserting the block into car.3dm; this means that if you update seat.3dm, it should automatically update in car.3dm. (If it doesn’t, type in BlockManager, select seat.3dm and click “Update”)
For the Grasshopper side of things, I’m not aware of a way to view the history of an object you’ve already made in Rhino. If you want the design to be parametric in Grasshopper, I’d think you’d have to start in Grasshopper. I’d probably start with a base point, and draw the circle/rectangle in GH and move forward from there. Something like the attached script will get you started.