Hi,
I prepared an optimization tool in Grasshopper, and I wonder if there is a way to take this tool out of the Rhino interface. I mean to make it a standalone app or a web app, without the need to open Rhino.
The tool starts with importing DWG file of a site boundary (for construction), and then the user marks a few lines (for roads) and areas (which are reserved for a specific purpose) and in the rest of the area the tool is doing some optimized layouts of housing units. The question is- Is there a tool that can do such interactive work, using the GH definition, but not inside the Rhino interface?
I know Shapediver and Viktor, as web app options, but it seems like both of them cannot have a graphic input (for example, drawing a road centerline)…
I would like to know what options are out there, even if it requires some coding to make it work…
You can run a grasshopper app without looking at Rhino in several different ways.
It sounds like a CAD UI is an integral part of your process though: you open a DWG, look at it, and mark up some roads and other data before starting an analysis (and modification to the drawing?)
If not Rhino, what do you want to use as a UI for marking up the roads and special areas and saying ‘go, analyze!’?
What’s the output? Another DWG file containing the positioned housing units and other data?
And what is your goal for the package or product? Is your goal to serve users who don’t own a copy of Rhino? A tool for use within your company, and the company can pay for a rhino.compute license?
Hi Nathan,
Thanks for the reply. And the question…
Basically, it is an internal tool, that helps the design team to find the best and optimized urban planning for a given site, which they get as a boundary line (closed curve) from the land owner as a DWG file.
Then they make some urban design exploration on top of the site. Before they did it using Autocad (slow manual work). The tool I made with GH is actually compressing 4 days of manual work into 30 min playing around and exploring options.
I made a cool UI with HumanUI, so the users don’t need to mess with the GH canvas. And yet, as none of the team members knows Rhino, it is a challenge for them…
So what would be best is to have a simple interface that allows insertion of a basic DWG for the boundary, and then let them draw lines/curves/ some 2D shapes to mark areas and then press generate and get live feedback of their plan, and then finetune it with real-time housing unit count… Then take it out as 2d and 3d output.
The code is doing all that right now, but What the team would like to have is a standalone UI with a 2D/3D viewport, without the whole Rhino interface around it.
They don’t mind buying a license for either of Rhino and other things (Rhino. compute?) as long as it can be done.
To emphasize it I cut the Rhino canvas from the interface and put on the side the UI from the code. Hope it is clearer now.
Nice! I haven’t build out a tool chain like that myself yet, so take the following with a grain of salt.
Rhino has some skinning capabilities which I believe would let you hide some of the more intimidating parts of the interface while keeping whatever power you decide to expose available.
To me, continuing to stay as entirely within the Rhino ecosystem as you can would be a tempting approach because it lets you continue to develop basically the whole tool in one piece, which happens to the be a piece (Rhino+GH) that you’re skilled in.
As you gradually expand or modify the tool, that also avoids wondering about whether whatever other UI you find to connect to Rhino has the new capabilities you need.
@Nathan_Bossett - there is some code kicking around for Rhino.Inside CPython - which could lead to what you are after.
I’ve got a suit of tools here written in GH with a HumanUI user interface that I’ve compiled into a Rhino Plugin, complete with menu items etc. In this approach the user has no access to the GH file and would just need to ignore the rest of the Rhino controls to run your app.
Hi DK,
Thanks for the info,
Would you be able to share a screenshot of what you managed to do, please?
Does it have an interactive viewport where I could draw lines and such?
We are currently working on adding a built-in drawing tool inside the ShapeDiver platform’s UI, I will let you now when we make progress. However, since you mentioned that some required coding is not an issue, you could already build such an interface around a ShapeDiver model using the viewer API. Here is an old example pointing you to the right direction: https://8upbvx.csb.app/
Let us know in the forum if you need assistance about this topic.
Hi, bravo about the app, looks super cool, I am more of a longboard guy, but hey, cheers for that tool you made.
On the thread subject… It seems you did not take it out of the Rhino environment, and since the app doesn’t need any graphic input, you could actually create a 3D window within the HumanUI interface…
Do you know any examples of taking a GH file into Compute and creating a standalone app?