I have recently been constructing whole cities in Rhino using the Elk plugin. This parses OpenStreetMap data into Grasshopper geometry, allowing you to visualise any city or area in the world in your Rhino viewport. One of the most interesting ways of getting your cities to look like cities is getting the buildings right. It … Continue reading Make buildings with heights in Elk for Grasshopper
Since my post last year on modelling cities in Grasshopper, I have learnt a few more things in how to get the most out of Grasshopper. I am now much more adept in using meshes, a much lighter data type than surfaces, and I have learnt a few more tricks in getting the buildings to … Continue reading Modelling the city of York with Grasshopper, Elk and OpenStreetMap
A Grasshopper canvas constructed with Elk components. Download an OSM file using the export button on OpenStreetMap and open the OSM file within this GH file. Ensure Rhino’s units are in mm. The Grasshopper document will automatically create a 3D preview of the map data you have entered.
Download the Grasshopper script I used to render cities in Rhino with. Requirements This file requires the following Grasshopper plugins to be installed: MeshEdit Road Maker (Optional) Keyboard reader
How to read the normal of a mesh in Grasshopper in C#, and flip the mesh if the normals are facing the wrong way. Creating city buildings in Rhino I recently revisited the task of generating cities in Rhino using Elk. One of the problems with this original solution was that I had no fast … Continue reading Orient a Grasshopper mesh so that its normals face upwards
Building on from my Road Maker, where the centrelines of roads can be converted into 2D meshes suitable for rendering more realistic roads in Grasshopper (as done here), a recent task at the office required that these meshes then be turned into a collection of curves marking the outline of the road. This Grasshopper script … Continue reading Convert a network of roads into 2D curve plans in Grasshopper
Creating a mesh from a curve can be challenging in Grasshopper. Most ways of doing it involve creating a surface and then meshing that surface. And once the mesh is made, it often has inconsistent face densities, with unusual points of high point density. The mathematics behind these methds are fine for the general case … Continue reading FastMesh for Grasshopper: A cluster to make fast, light meshes from curves
Creating a mesh from a curve can be challenging in Grasshopper. Most ways of doing it involve creating a surface and then meshing that surface. And once the mesh is made, it often has inconsistent face densities, with unusual points of high point density. The mathematics behind these methds are fine for the general case … Continue reading FastMesh for Grasshopper
Using the freely available map data from OpenStreetMap (OSM), it is possible to create maps and renders of towns and cities within Rhino. Most of the hard work was done by the creators of Elk, a plugin for Grasshopper that parses OSM data files and returns geometry sorted into roads, rivers, railway lines and so … Continue reading Rendering cities in Rhino with OpenStreetMap data
A mix of favourite and interesting plugins for Grasshopper. Energy and building simulation Ladybug and Honeybee Import EPW files, solar radiation analysis, daylight calculations, thermal calculations Diva for Rhino Daylight calculations mr comfy Thermal and daylight calculations Geometry Jackalope Rhino morph operations Lunchbox Convert surfaces to panels MeshEdit Essential mesh manipulation tools Workflow Octopus Multi-objective … Continue reading Favourite Grasshopper components
