PC spec required for using grasshopper

Hi,

Recently started learning Rhino+grasshoppes.
Learning some tutorials, found out that sometimes grasshopper freezes.
Should I expand PC memory, or make the file(code) lighter?

My PC spec is below;
Processer: Inter(R) Xeon(R) 4.00G
RAM: 16.0GB
Open memory: 287Gb

There are several possible reasons why grasshopper freezes which doesn’t depend much on hardware, for example if changing an input to Graft while another input expects Flattened, or vise versa.

How big are your GH-files? How many components?

I doubt any tutorial exhausts your hardware if not accidentally grafting an input which shouldn’t be grafted (causing multiple reads of other inputs).

// Rolf

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Thank you very much for your help!

The Gh-file was just 744kB,
so checked it again as your advice and found that I made bounding box as per object, which made the calculation complex.

Thankyou so much again!!

I found that 2 monitors was the biggest boost to my productivity with GH & Rhino. I use the software to design things for 3D printing, most of which are more vertical then horizntal, so I put the GH window on my primary monitor in landscape mode and the Rhino window on the secondary in portrait mode. I also use a short Rhino macro to autostart GH when Rhino starts. And finally, I set Windows to autostart Rhino when a GH file is double-clicked. This loads Rhin and GH with the selected fil active in GH.

Also, these are the steps I use for dealing with those situations where GH gets itself into a CPU loop. (I’ve never encountered an actual freeze - i.e., when the PC just stops, but it’s not too difficult to cause a disabled loop which can run for in indeterminate amount of time):

  1. Use Task Manager to end Rhino.
  2. Restart Rhino (which for me restarts GH as well.)
  3. From the GH File menu, open the Special Folders/AutoSave folder.
  4. Double-click the topmost file that’s listed.

That will open your current GH file at the point just before you made the change that caused the CPU loop. So don’t make that same change again, or the whole process will repeat. Do something else, then use File Save As to save your changed (and hopefully fixed) file back to it’s original location and name (or a different name if you want a new copy.)

2 Likes

I didn’t know much about crashing-recover-process but now I can fully understand!! (Probably, with hope…)
2 monitors sounds good! I would try it !
Thanks a lot!!!

Some tips:

The better the specs the better. However, GH used to run 10 years ago and people could work productive. So … don’t worry.

In order to prevent freezes always work on minimal example unless your script is completed. A minimal example usually means work with 10 instead of 10000 items.

If you run on large data, make sure to turn off preview. Also try to consider 3 things:

  • Make sure your geometry is not unnecessary complex (= Lightweight data):
    E.g. if a curve can represent an outline with 5 control points don’t allow it to have 100 cps.
  • Reduce any operation with intersections (splitting, projections, boolean operations…) involved as much as possible
  • Divide and conquer, meaning try to isolate areas to be atomic. It’s better to trim 10 surfaces with 150 curves, as 1 surface 1500 curves. This contradicts a bit with point 1, but its sometimes worth to consider and a valuable trade-off.
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Compared to other ‘cad’ software, the lightness of RH+GH is really surprising!

Thank you very much for the tips!
I’ll keep it in my mind and study more :slight_smile: