In an old tutorial I have it talks about a wireless “receiver” which was under Parameters. Is this object still around in the new GH or can I do the same thing in a different way? I’m beginning to get a rats nest of connections and trying to clean things up visually.
You can right-click an input on any grasshopper node and select ‘Wire display’ -> ‘Hidden’
Wires set to hidden will only be visible when you have the corrosponding node active.
Many thanks.
Telepathy is super useful here, too.
1 Like
This looks very interesting. I am completely new to GH. Still very much in the learning phase. Telepathy is a plug-in. How do I go about adding in to GH? I know it’s a dumb question.
Download the plug-in file. Right-click it, Properties, and if there’s an “unblock” checkbox check that bad puppy.
In GH’s File menu, Special Folders/Components Folder will open the folder where these things go. Drag the plug-in in there, then restart Rhino.
How plug-ins manifest depends on their specifics: some add a whole new tab or menu to GH, some just sprinkle new options into existing ones. Telepathy is of the second type, and once it’s installed you’ll see two additional components in the Params tab. You can’t miss them, they’re purple.
It bothers me about Wire Display/Hidden that the receiving component has the little wifi lines indicating it’s connected to a hidden wire, but the sending component doesn’t: it looks identical to one not hooked up at all.
I feel like that’s a buglet – I can’t think of anything good about that behavior, and it causes me confusion sometimes.
1 Like
What bothers me is that wires can be hidden at all. I wish I’d never added that feature.
1 Like
Well now that you’ve done it, don’t take it away please?
I agree it’s not without problems, but as long as the alternative is illegible tangles, I’d rather have it than not. We have bitten the apple.
1 Like
If you’re using Rhino6, I’d recommend wire relays to organise bundles. You can double click on any wire to insert one, double click a relay to undo it.
Where do I find wire relays?
Back when I was working as an engineer we used nodes to connect things and keep circuit diagrams clean and prevent them from becoming rats nests. They were labeled so you could tell what signal they represented. Worked for Spice analysis as well as circuit board layout. I don’t see a problem with invisible wires as long as they are labeled. T’would be extra nice if when you hilighted one, it told you where to look for the other end.
If double clicking on a wire doesn’t insert a relay, you’re not running a new enough version of Rhino6. You can also find them in the Params.Util panel if you want to insert them the old-fashioned way.
Relays can be custom named, and inherit their name from all source relays if unnamed.
Okay. I was able to double click and get a wire relay. Like so many of the objects in GH, I have no idea how to use it. There is no help thing to describe it. How does it work? What do I do with it?
My question too! I know about relays of course but I haven’t understood what they’re for; I’ve looked at many GH examples but never offhand seen how to use them. Labeling a wire in the middle doesn’t help me – it’s at the ends that I need labels – and the relay doesn’t make the wire less intrusive or let me route it advantageously.
I don’t like to be taking up precious Rutten time, but does anyone else watching here know what they’re for?
My present feeling about relays is that I wish I could turn off the feature, because I create them all the time by mistake.
Relay are useful on big definition where you want to connect a new component that is far from the source but you are lucky to have a river/wire passing near. You haven’t to drag a wire on a little scale canvas
We are looking for a simple explanation or example of how to use them.
It allows you to control the coarse shape of wires. In the simplest case you just insert some relays to run a wire around objects that would otherwise be underneath it, making it harder to see what’s going on.
Another use is to run a wire with a bunch of relays over long distances, forking off the values at various places:
Finally you can name relays, which is basically a way to label wires. Also unnamed relays inherit their names from all sources, so you can more readily see where data ultimately comes from:
3 Likes
Thanks, David. I see what’s going on in the first two. In the last one, how is the data treated when joined into the Data A|Data B thing? That’s a relay also, yes? Apologies if it’s a dumb question.
Yeah, it just merges like it would with any other free floating parameter. You could replace all relays with generic parameters and functionally you’d get the same network.
The last image has two named relays (“Data A” and “Data B”) and one unnamed relay, which shows the names of both its sources. Although I just realised the order of the names you see is not the order in which the sources are connected, names always appear in the same order. This should probably be changed.
Certainly if the order in which things were connected is going to matter, it should be available by examining the objects.