Introduction to Grasshopper

v0.1 by Ger Walsh - October 2023

Grasshopper is a visual programming language and environment^[1] that runs within Rhino.

Reference and discussions on Discourse.

And previously on grasshopper3d.com

Structure

• Basic Tutorial, set up and interface (on this page)
• Built-in Nodes (reference page)
• Using Ladybug (Environmental Analysis)

Grasshopper is built in to Rhino. To get started, type Grasshopper. Grasshopper can also work with Autodesk Revit.

Alternate ways to Visualise Climate and Comfort Graphs

Other Software,

• Revit (Ecotect is part of Revit),
• ArchiCAD (TBC.)

This software is the work of Dr Andrew Marsh on this website. Andrew's work visualising data includes work on environmental analysis, rendering and psychometric charting - all wrapped very neatly in interactive web apps. (Thanks to Prof. Murt Redington for pointing me to his work. And Ryan DeBree (SAUL 2023), whose model is in the screengrab).

Please note, for the 3D Sun-path software,

• Only ASCII STL files (not binary) will work.
• If it is encoded in ASCII, the software will fit the graph to the model. Ensure the file only contains the buildings in question.
• In Rhino, North seems to be aligned with the Y (green) axis.