Ideas for Grasshopper Python Scripting
Hello everyone, I’m an architectural designer and have been working for a design-fab studio since graduating a few years ago. My focus there is almost entirely on the development of grasshopper definitions, scripts, and tools.
**My question to r/rhino is this: what kinds of custom solutions/scripts/workflows have you built that have been helpful to you/your team either professionally, academically or personally? Do you have feel like there are missing functionalities that could be filled in by some custom tooling?**
Some background:
In the last month or so I’ve had time to aggregate, refine, debug, and standardize the numerous python scripts/components I have developed since starting my job. (Something that should’ve been done consistently throughout projects, but I did not know better at the time).
I’m currently the only parametric designer on our team, which can be pretty challenging. I often struggle to think creatively about computational design and modeling without being able to really deep dive into workflows and processes.
Hopefully this does not read like a “give me ideas on how to do my job” post, or like I’m crowdsourcing brainstorming lol. That’s not the case. I’m planning to more publicly release some of the tools and scripts in our library and (ideally) get some new users and developers to poke around and test, build upon, or remix them at their leisure. This is purely for the love of the game.
Some of the scripts I’ve made include (highlighting some as examples, not comprehensive):
**Document Configurations**
- Variable/parameter value controller from a .csv
- UserObject generator which exposes configs like cluster names, nickname, description, category, and icon file path directly on the grasshopper canvas
**Grid Tools**
- really just cleaning up grid generation from native Grasshopper, but certainly not trying to reinvent the wheel
**Pattern and Geometric Tools**
- 1-2 component scripts that generate patterns within a given list of grid cells using some user-controlled points + voronoi
- More informative bounding box (3d) and bounding rectangle (2d) tools
**Fabrication/Construction Documentation Tools**
- A panel + frame notch system that’s fully parametric, since we work a lot with perforated aluminum panels mounted on bldg. exteriors
**Maths and Utilities**
- Mostly lightweight components that solved design I was working with
- Step rounding script that rounds values to the nearest user-defined step (ex: x=4.48, rounding step = 0.1, so x=4.5)
- Data gate which essentially acts as an enable/disable component toggle, directly in canvas.