Hi all, I’ve put together a small Grasshopper component that connects the Sparrow nesting engine to Grasshopper. It runs on a background thread and is non-blocking. GitHub: GitHub - coroush/sparrow-grasshopper: nesting for 2D irregular packing in Grasshopper3d · GitHub Still early - if something breaks or behaves oddly, let me know here or open an issue on GitHub. update: now available to install via PackageManager in Rhino & Food4Rhino.

Thanks for testing! that’s indeed strange! as far as i tested it usually returns a decent result after 30 seconds (around 500 objects). could you share with me your input data? i wonder if there is an error happening thats not reported correctly.

Thanks i ll send you the script and data once I am back at home

Looks great! Nice job. I thought about good open nest alternatives for a long time. I know its a wrapper, but i thought it would be nice to try to run sparrow on gpu, testing multiple rotations at the same time.

[image] inno: the Transform X output, I’d personally like it to have it with same data structure of the C curve input (it now has structure of the IDs output, used the circled thing to make it work the way I wanted) [image] Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome.gh (280.3 KB) [image] coroush: about the transform, im thinking that benefit of this way is that nested curves have the same data structure with transforms (and any attachments that we bring later) which is based on sheets I agree with you on that, the only thing is that the nested curve have already got that Transformation applied, so I personally don’t find it particularly useful :slight_smile: in the case I presented earlier I was nesting some outlines that contain many other curves: the outline is used for nesting, and then the transform data is applied to those contained curves in order to make them follow the nesting transformations of the their outlines because of that, you need some sort of data tree handling anyways, like mine or like the more direct one that Laurent used: [image] Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_2.gh (285.0 KB) meaning that every time you want to actually apply the Transformations offered by the SparrowNest component to some curves which are not the ones you actually nested, you always need to recall those by the ID output first, which is like 2+ more components that you are always going to use, but most important (to me) this is changing the data structure from whatever you had before, into a per-nesting-sheet base, which might be something you don’t always want (but of course there could be times this option is preferred) if the Transform output had same data structure of the Curve input, instead, you would just graft it and Transform the data tree of contained curves directly: the data structure of your curves does not change because of the Nesting to be fair, I see the reasons why both Transforms options could be very useful… :smiley:

sorry for double posting, I saw my previous post already got some reactions so I didn’t feel like editing that with new text [image] inno: I hope there will be a way to just continue the previous computation without having to re-calculate the initial 10 seconds? [image] coroush: for continuation, how would you imagine the workflow? do we have another input that says continue or start fresh? or does this mean to take an initial arrangement and optimize from there with another chained component? i will have a look what it takes to do this I’m like at 0% knowledge on how to build/code GH components, but I read some threads here and there in this forum, so I heard about some “macro-topics” like principle of how it works, but I have no idea of the details :smiley: I’m wondering if it’s possible, for an expired component, to know which input or inputS changed before/after its expiration if all: the SparrowNest component is expired the only input which changed before/after expiration is the Time limit the time value was increased then → continue calculating from the point you were before expiration which is a terrible way to say, if at a certain point I’m not happy of my 1 minutes nesting and I want to try 2 minutes, maybe I don’t have to re-calculate also the first minute again, as the result of the first minute is already in front of my eyes while I move the mouse on the slider to increase the time [again, my assumption can easily be completely wrong, so take it as if it was coming from a 4 year old boy :slight_smile: ] lastly, about the seed, I understand what you mean I think reasoning in terms of iterations+seed would be easier, instead of time (which of course is also hardware dependant) I think that mostly would be useful for troubleshooting, for instance if I wanted to let you know what specific settings led to the creation of those shapes in the middle of the rightmost nesting sheet earlier (another thing that comes to my mind, GH class where each student is trying to redo what the teacher does on screen, but each gets a different result) [image] inno: [image] I don’t think repeatability has absolute and unquestionable value, but for sure would be a very welcome addition (eventually with dedicated inputs that can be exposed only if the small + is clicked after zooming-in a lot, like the new R8 components) [edit] maybe things could be like they are now, but there could be another output of some sort with some debugging text? in such a way to tell you “this solution was generated with random seed 1234567890 and 97 iterations” so you are able to use those data to reinstate it and see what happened under the hood? [/edit] by the way, a lot of words from my fingers, but be sure that it’s already fucking awesome as it is now :clap: :clap: :clap:

I do get quite bad results by nesting the “Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_2.gh“ definition. This is what I do get by default, without changing anything. Note the small shapes that are wrongly nested? It is possible to add SURFACE or BREP nesting support? This way the more complicated shapes with holes should be nested correctly. [Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_2]

[image] Cumberland: [Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_2] I see a lot of shapes are missing, this looks like a problem that comes before the SparrowNest component, most probably is already present in the data tree due to maybe R7 differences? The first thing that comes to my mind is to check the Curve Offset direction at the very beginning of the definition, and also the Region Union result, it should be something like this, which is a sort of outer contours of the bigger parts, even the ones that are separated, in order to be nested together: [image]

This solved the issue (for now): [Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_3] It uses the SurfaceBorder component from Sasquatch. Sparrow_Nest_is_awesome_3.gh (271.5 KB)

Has managed somebody to nest 3D parts? I am thinking to a mixed workflow, create the 2D silhouette of the parts, nest the 2D shape, use the transformation resulted to move the original 3D shapes on the nested sheets. The only issue, I get mixed results.

SparrowGH - nesting for 2D irregular strip packing

Grasshopper

laurent_delrieu (Laurent Delrieu) April 16, 2026, 7:47am 21

I didn’t try with Nesting tools but I do it with Wordle tool, it must be the same. Perhaps grouping could help. With Sparrow at them moment the important thing is to have just one closed curve per object.

Topic		Replies	Views
OpenNest can't use some shapes OpenNest windows	40	3989	October 3, 2022
OpenNest New Release 🎉 OpenNest windows	57	2631	August 20, 2026
OpenNest for Rhino8 - plugin update OpenNest windows , mac	166	10396	May 13, 2026
Constraint translations for nesting OpenNest mac	27	2690	October 22, 2022
Sequential Numbering of pieces for laser cutting Rhino mac	20	4111	March 7, 2022

SparrowGH - nesting for 2D irregular strip packing

Related topics