Pergola / curtain wall

[guillaume.dupas]

It would be very useful to have a "beam network" and "horizontal curtain wall" tool to be able to draw pergolas.
For now, it's possible to draw a horizontal curtain wall and rotate it with Rhino, but it's very cumbersome and difficult to modify because VARQ doesn't seem to like it, and it's not possible to limit it or extend it towards a border.
Thank you.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

Hi @guillaume.dupas you can already create a pergola with columns and beams. I’m not sure if the curtain wall would be the appropriate object for that. You can also use an Element created from a Grasshopper Style. There’s one example on food4Rhino: Pergola | Food4Rhino

[ng5_Alex]

I second this simple and logical request, to be able to create multiple beams as a single selectable entity, perhaps named beam network.

The suggestion to use a grasshopper style would stand, but as so many recent forum posts show grasshopper styles are unfortunately plagued with too many bugs.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

@ng5_Alex The assembly of VisualARQ objects in a Grasshopper Style is a planned feature for future versions. Meantime, you can use VisualARQ objects in Grasshopper Styles if you explode them in the Grasshopper definition, and connect the resulting geometrical parts into output Geometry/Brep Params. Take a look at this example: Truss with regular height | Food4Rhino

@ng5_Alex

so many recent forum posts show grasshopper styles are unfortunately plagued with too many bugs.

Can you specify which ones?

[ng5_Alex]

Although i feel a bit strange to be called out, but i guess maybe expressing my disappointment with the many bugs somehow offends you.

So, here are some recent ones.

Grasshopper Style Input Parameters Issue

I am experimenting with using VisualARQ Dynamic Blocks for naval architecture. Currently, I’m working with a concept that takes a planar path curve and a deck surface as geometry input parameters, along with a bunch of numeric parameters, to generate a curved bench that extends to the deck. I think it makes the most sense to make this a VA object by creating a Wall grasshopper style, considering that the input is a plan curve that I want to be able to manipulate. So, I go to the GH wall style w…

A very basic functionality, to have a surface parameter as grasshopper style input does not work.

Bug acknowledged by asuni, answer future version.

Grasshopper Tree Stucture Output - Output Layers

Hello, deconstruct slab style outputs weird tree structure, where besides the weird tree branch paths numbers [0], [6] etc, output C slab style components has unexpected items count in the first branch, since no slab has six layers named Concrete 150mm. [tree structure layers] Same happens with other deconstruct components. Am i missing something or is this a bug? best alex.

Deconstruct components are bugged, which pretty much makes grasshopper scrips with visualarq useless.

Bug acknowledged by asuni, answer notify when fixed unknown current or future version

Grasshopper style not loading on startup

Hey there, I have a project using grasshopper styles. When I start Rhino by directly clicking the file, I get this error message: “This file contains 8 unknown objects (…)”, and after that a list of Beam, Beam Options, Rectangular Profile, and so forth - the VARQ components in the definition, which are all ascribed to plugin “GhVa30”, which seems like it’s missing or not recognized. Sometimes the related items in the model (the walls created with the style) are shown but I can’t, for instance…

This is mentioned in other posts too. Workaround is to load rhino-grasshopper and then load any visualarq files and gh scripts. Trivial bug but…

Bug not acknowledged by asuni, or acknowledged in other post.

The list can grow if one has the time and patience to go through the subforum.

The list can grow huge if one examines the bugs in general.

To your defense it is great that one can find too many posts with resolved bugs. Kudos to the development team.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

Thanks @ng5_Alex I just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss any new bug or something I wasn’t aware of.

From the 3 errors mentioned, only one is related to Grasshopper Styles. The other two are related to VisualARQ Components in Grasshopper. And from those two, we will give priority to the one of wrong data tree structure, since the other one doesn’t have an easy solution, and it can be avoided if you don’t launch Rhino and Grasshopper by doing double click on a GH file.

If you see other errors or have any requests, please don’t hesitate to post them!

[guillaume.dupas]

I find that the curtain wall is rather suitable for making pergolas because we can adjust the posts in both directions, the supports, and possibly an infill. These are exactly the parameters needed to create a pergola. In BIM modeling in building (even in REVIT), we often have to modify certain types of objects… However, I find that even in version 3 of VisualARQ, the curtain walls are extremely heavy and often cause Rhino to crash or freeze. It is urgent to improve this family… Regarding Grasshopper. It is very powerful but honestly not practical (except in very specific cases). The main functionalities should be hardcoded into vARQ. Thank you.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

@guillaume.dupas

However, I find that even in version 3 of VisualARQ, the curtain walls are extremely heavy and often cause Rhino to crash or freeze.

I’m waiting to get your samples, but I’ve also experienced this slow performance in other cases. This is definitely something we are looking to improve.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

@guillaume.dupas We have improved the performance of generation of curtain walls with a large number of cells in VisualARQ 3.9 version. You can download the RC1 here: VisualARQ 3 - Version 3.9 RC1 released

[guillaume.dupas]

Hello,
Ok thank you, I will test it.
However, I found a bug in V3.9. The layers in the curtain wall settings are not correct… Difficult to explain but when we put a component in a layer, the layer appearing in the menu is not the one in which the element is actually stored…

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

Hi @guillaume.dupas we detected this issue in other files. This should work correctly in VisualARQ 3.10 RC1 already (available here: VisualARQ 3 - Version 3.10 RC1 released), but we will try to fix it for the next 3.9 update.

[fsalla (Francesc Salla)]

Hi @guillaume.dupas, I confirm this issue has been fixed in the recente VisualARQ 3.9.1 update: Update - VisualARQ