In the Rhino WIP, we’ve added the Content Viewer to Grasshopper 1.
What is the Content Viewer?
The Content Viewer is a feature that graphically displays almost any type of Grasshopper content. While Grasshopper relies on real-time geometry preview in Rhino, the Content Viewer helps you inspect both geometry and non-geometry data directly in Grasshopper canvas.
Why does it matter?
The Content Viewer was created to make Grasshopper data easier to inspect, understand, and debug directly within a definition.
Many workflows rely on non-geometry data such as materials, text, styles, colors, and other document properties that can be difficult to visualize clearly. The Content Viewer can display many different Grasshopper data types, including materials, textures, line types, hatches, annotation styles, booleans, numbers, text, fonts, colors, and more.
This makes it a flexible tool for inspecting and understanding both geometry and non-geometry data within a definition.
By providing graphical previews for both geometry and a wide range of Grasshopper data types, the Content Viewer helps users better understand how data flows through a definition and improves readability. It makes complex information easier to inspect directly within Grasshopper.
How does the Content Viewer work?
Drag and drop the Content Viewer onto the Grasshopper canvas. You can find it in the Params tab under Util.
When the component is unconnected, it displays a Rhino viewport directly in Grasshopper, and you can change the display mode.
Once connected to the output of any Grasshopper component, it graphically displays either the geometry or the data associated with that output. For example, if the output contains a hatch pattern, the Content Viewer will display that hatch pattern visually. If it contains lofted curves, it will display the resulting geometry.
By isolating and visualizing a specific output, the Content Viewer makes it easier to inspect individual pieces of data and geometry without the distraction of other previewed objects in the scene.
Try It
- Download and open the Grasshopper definition named ContentViewer.gh in the Rhino WIP.
- The file contains three examples.
- In the first example, you can go through the Value Picker list to visualize different hatch patterns. Right-click the Query Model Hatch Pattern component and select Add Default Patterns to load Rhino’s default hatch pattern library.
- In the second example, you can visualize your Rhino viewport and change the display mode by right-clicking the Content Viewer component. Navigation Controls: Hold Shift and use the Left Mouse Button to pan the view, the Mouse Wheel to zoom in and out, and the Right Mouse Button to rotate the view.
- In the third example, by connecting the Content Viewer to different component outputs, you can explore how it visualizes different types of Grasshopper content, including geometry and non-geometry data.
- ContentViewer.gh (8.5 KB)
We’d love to hear your feedback. Let us know what feels useful, what works well, and where you think the feature could be improved.
