Grasshopper Fabrication Drawing Creation

Hi All

I have automated the geometry in Rhino for our steelwork fabrication. The last process is to produce a drawing with the geometry and a table of values. All this information is available in the grasshopper script. I am after advice about how to try and automate the drawing production to produce something that looks similar to the image?

Thanks
Russ

Hi Russ,

It’s definitely possible to do this with Grasshopper, as I did just that a few years ago. I iterated through parametrically generated wall sections and it would create a drawing with numbering for each and export it as a DXF if I remember correctly. I can dig it out and see what I used for creating the plans in batch in GH. For a loop to run through a lot of iterations, you can use something like Anemone, which is simple enough and does the trick.

A short version, version1:
Set up Gh Make2d that generates the line drawing. Draw all leaders, dimensions, etc. in 3d based on the desired view direction. Move Make2d results to sheet curve on model space. Orient3d all annotations to the same sheet. Positioning is a bit tricky, but possible. Create layout per sheet curve. If there’s plenty, this can be automated.

Version2:
Generate all annotations in 3d. Save view or cplane. Make a layout detail. Change view to cplane or saved view. Scale to correct scale. Viewmode Technical in order to get the Hidden linetype. Tweak view settings to get the correct look.

It as very possible with many plugins like Pod, KettyBIM and so on. You can send the file, however, If it’s a large and real project and you are a commercial, from my part I will do it in exchange for a fee. But if you just want guidance, I will be very glad to guide for free.

Many thanks for all you replies. I like Version 2 suggested by Toni. What are the best grasshopper components or plugins to used save a named view?

@Russel_Odendaal
You can use in Rhino8’s native Grasshopper/Rhino/Viewports/Model view component. After baking it gets saved as a named view. If you have a lot of these, you might want to automate the Layout generation as well.

Thanks. I have been playing around with this. It only seems to produce plan (top) views regardless of the camera location and target. I am trying to create a section view (front). Is there something I am missing?

@Russel_Odendaal
You propably gave the camera location as a point instead of a plane. Point is converted to XY-plane, and camera direction is negative Z-axis. The prompt should be maybe a little more informative about the location being a plane input @AndyPayne



Create views.gh (13.2 KB)

Thank you so much. That all makes sense. I knew it would be something simple but could not find the answer in any documentation.

Hi All. I have made some good progress on the drawing automation. I am just a bit stuck on two Items:

  1. How to link a toggle switch to automatically bake the views I have created? All the bake components seem to only work with geometry?
  2. I have 3 lists of data which I would like to combine with some headers to make a table? Then I would like to print the data to text in the XY plane in Rhino? I will then reference this in a view to display the table on the layouts.

Any help would be great.

Thanks
Russ

@Russel_Odendaal
For
2. Here is a crude table creation script. I simplified it a bit, but I have used this myself in a lot of projects, and have is as a cluster in data extraction scripts. This one uses Elefront Legacy, but I think the Text component can be now exhanged to Rh8 native component.



Crude table.gh (23.4 KB)

@Russel_Odendaal
And for

  1. I do not know, but you could try to gather all the View outputs intoa single component, and press “Insert” key. That might simplify it enough..

Thanks you this is great. Worked perectly

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Managed to automate this using the new Cache feature in Rhino 8 and a simple if statement linked to a toggle switch

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