Building UIs in Grasshopper can be a frustrating process. Setting up simple tab or group structures often requires numerous components, and UI logic quickly starts to clutter definitions that should really focus on geometry.
I’ve started a project (name still undecided) aimed at simplifying this workflow. The idea is: use context inputs/outputs to define the parameters you want to expose, then build and interact with your UI directly in a browser. This integrates cleanly with Rhino.Compute as well (Local mode does not use Rhino.Compute). Instead of managing countless UI components inside Grasshopper, you drop in a single component and handle the rest through the web-based interface.
Before releasing anything and committing to maintaining it along with avoiding avoidable breaking changes, I’d like to get some early feedback. Are there essential features you feel are missing? Any critical capabilities you’d expect from a tool like this?
Below, a little teaser to give an idea how it’s currently working:
Super cool! I am intruiged about the live 3D preview that can be seen as a option at the beginning of the video. That together with running it on rhino.compute could almost replace some simple Shapediver scripts, if it can run on a web server as well.
Other than that its too hard to tell unless I can try it, because it seems like you already thought of a lot of things. Incidentally I have also built something similar (a web based UI system) in the past. I am a UX Designer, so happy to give some UX feedback once we can test it.
Thanks for the feedback. I’m still fixing a few obvious issues, but I’m hoping to release the plugin in December.
The plugin will be part of a larger MIT project, and the local UI will automatically integrate with rhino.compute as well - so the UI only needs to be built once for both local and compute workflows.
It would be great to get some UX inputs from you once the first beta is released.
Do you have a Text input into Grasshopper as well? (we use that for one of our GH scripts a lot).
And so good that you have done value lists already. McNeel hasn’t been able to add those to the Remote Control Panel for like the last 10 years, which kind of makes it unusable.
I was just going to suggest that this should be paired with Rhino.Compute with an in-browser preview. This is great. This is sort of like the next iteration of the App Server. Well done.
Decoupled the rhino compute part in a core TS lib which will offer full type safety and a couple of convenience classes and functions. Would be amazing to get some feedback on that as well in the future.
All of that will be open sourced when the base architecture is a bit more stable.
Sounds great. I really think the Rhino.Compute connection could be really useful for people who want an easy way to publish an online configurator of sorts.
