Hello! I’ve had some introductory experience with Grasshopper in my education. Now i’m working in a small firm, we do everything from small dwellings to schools and laboratories. I know that grasshopper is great for making cutting edge architecture, and that the big firms (At least here in Denmark) use it all the time. I want to get better at it, and implement it in my work in ArchiCAD, however, i’m unsure what grasshopper can do for me, if i’m making a house or a facade? Does anyone use it in small scale architecture, with a stringent budget, and how?
Well there is archicad to rhino/grasshopper connection which I was using in practice when the building enters construction stage.
Fore me sketching is faster in rhino, and when you are fixed with design stage, you have to use gh archicad connection to convert geometry to bim-objects such as slabs, windows and etc.
Just try it and after some time you will understand if it is useful for your workflow or not.
as a small studio you probably make the 3D visualisations for clients or achitectural competitions yourself? If so, you’ll probably use some greens, especially for exterior renders. In this case, a good scripted scatterer, made would grasshopper, would be a huge, time-saving support for your work. I, myself am a 100% grasshopper noob, but am learning it now just for the sake of making such a skatterer…
As for modelling, grasshopper could come in handy if you had some self developing procedural elements such as ceilings or facades.
Grasshopper is visual scripting. Its programming, “easy” to use for non-programmers, and as such it is quite useful for all tasks where automation could be useful. It allows you to step into the world of algorithmic design, without having much background. However its a tool out of many needed for daily work. And its replaceable. You can solve many GH related problems differently, with different tools. In the end its the person behind the screen and his/her knowledge.
I have used it from uneven spiral staircase balustrade to huge urban design development.
It is great tool for problem solving and automation but keep designing in your head and on paper.
Well Grasshopper is a tool, of which the value depends on how you use it. People might think grasshopper is about creating fluid shark skin type of facades, etc.
While partially true being capable of doing that, grasshopper is a great platform for automation, which is more of a digital engineering thing over design. For example, it speeds up applying specialised brick to a facade, it speeds up building a mass based site model by utilising GIS data.
The output while look blocky, and often you can’t tell whether something is done in grasshopper or by traditional manual methods, the process is actually much faster.
I used grasshopper to trim 150 lines for an Autocad dwg file today instead of doing it one by one manually.