Grasshopper Environment Manager Called Sieve

Grasshopper
1

Hey everyone,

For years I’ve really wanted a way to control which plugins Grasshopper loads before it starts, especially when switching between different workflows (urban analysis, robotics, viz, etc.).

my partner and I finally found some time to work on it and put together an open-source plugin called Sieve.

What Sieve does (in theory!)

Instead of opening Grasshopper with your entire plugin zoo, you:

  • Launch Grasshopper through Sieve

  • Either:

    • Select plugins manually for this session, or

    • Choose a saved “environment” (a preset list of plugins for a specific workflow)

Grasshopper then starts with only those plugins, so you get:

  • Faster startup

  • Fewer conflicts

  • Cleaner tabs / fewer components you don’t need for that task

Repo: https://github.com/toolworkslab/Sieve
(Food4Rhino link: https://www.food4rhino.com/en/app/sieve)

Status

This is early – it works in many cases but:

  • There are lots of bugs / edge cases

  • UX definitely needs a complete redesign it just a place holder

So I’m sharing it now to avoid building this in a bubble.
I’d love if people could:

  • Try it in real workflows

  • Report bugs / weird behaviour

  • Suggest better UX patterns

  • And the bugs that are on

How to help

  • Try installing it and see if it behaves on your setup

  • Open issues here: https://github.com/…/Sieve/issues

  • If you want to contribute code, there’s a short README + CONTRIBUTING in the repo

Any feedback is super appreciated, this is something I personally always needed, so if it’s useful to others too I’d be very happy to keep pushing it forward.

Thanks :folded_hands:

(You can also ping me here if you have questions or ideas about the concept / implementation.)

2

OMG! This is such an awesome concept.

I need this for one reason only:

Best I can figure at least 50% of my 2min grasshopper start up time is taken up in loading @shapediver plugin and it’s long list of dependencies. However I really only use or edit Shapediver based GH code about once a month.

If Sieve can allow me a ‘Shapediver Switch’ I’m all in!

Cheers

DK

3

This is rad. I’m so in.I use grasshopper for so many different things I need completely different component sets. Not to mention I’ve been collecting interesting libraries for a decade, and I don’t need to wait for 90% of them to load for a normal session. My only solution to date has been just to manually add and remove from my Library, but an environment manager for Grasshopper would be rad! Can’t wait to try it out!

4

We finally fixed the issue of long loading times when starting Grasshopper! It is not out yet but will be in the next plugin release, which will come out next week.

That being said, Sieve sounds great indeed.

5

WOW :heart:

6

Just a sidenote, loading plugins from disc can speed things up too:

7

That’s very helpful, thanks​:folded_hands:t3::smiling_cat_with_heart_eyes: