It uses NURBS (Non-uniform rational B-spline) for its underlying geometry and can therefore model curves and surfaces that are mathematically precise as opposed to mesh-based applications that simulate a curved surface by faceting it. Rhino is a powerful 3D modeling application that is developed by McNeel & Associates, and since its release in 1980, it has become the leading 3D design application used for architecture, manufacturing, and industrial and product design because of its sophistication and versatility. Example of a simple Dynamo script that draws a circle. This is why visual programming requires its own brand of expertise, and contrary to developers’ claims that you don’t need to be a programmer to be able to work with Dynamo or Grasshopper, it does help to have a basic knowledge of coding. Needless to say, the script can get really large even for a simple design, and the script driving a complex design can get extremely complicated. A simple example of a Dynamo script that draws a circle is shown in Figure 2.
![revit to rhino revit to rhino](http://designplaygrounds.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Revit_Rhino.gif)
Regardless of the application, the fundamentals of design scripting are more or less the same: the creation of the different components of the design is driven by scripts that are captured in the form of nodes and the connections between then. With regard to design scripting in other BIM applications, GRAPHISOFT has preferred to have the “best of breed” bidirectional integration of ARCHICAD with Rhino/Grasshopper, Vectorworks developed it inhouse in 2016 with a tool called Marionette, and ALLPLAN is reportedly coming up with this capability in its Allplan BIM application.
![revit to rhino revit to rhino](https://architosh.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Rhino.jpg)
Last year, Autodesk also introduced Dynamo for Civil 3D to bring the power of design scripting to BIM for infrastructure. A year later, a Dynamo plug-in for Revit was introduced and it was open-sourced, spurring the development of an entire community around it (see ). In contrast to Bentley, Autodesk got into design scripting much later, with the release of the standalone Dynamo Studio for design scripting in 2015. (Image courtesy: Tower design by Tapani Talo) Bentley's GenerativeComponents algorithmic design application is now built into its BIM application, OpenBuildings Designer. GenerativeComponents has now been integrated into Bentley’s BIM application, OpenBuildings Designer, making it easier to create BIM models using script-driven computational design (as shown in Figure 1) rather than conventional modeling tools.įigure 1. It was available as a stand-alone algorithmic design application for several years and used by technologically advanced design firms such as Foster + Partners and Arup.
![revit to rhino revit to rhino](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EIFKKPlTZ1g/UQh-LOxc3uI/AAAAAAAAEaU/Fjb5ZAjIVfA/s1600/2012-11-12_1040.png)
The earliest example of design scripting in AEC was Bentley’s GenerativeComponents, which was launched in 2007. Since the script is encoding the key parameters that drive the form, it is also sometimes referred to as parametric design.
![revit to rhino revit to rhino](https://archinate.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/main-graphic.png)
You can change the form just by modifying the script, which not only allows the modeling of very complex forms but also enables many design iterations to be quickly explored. The script captures the logic that generates the form. The idea behind design scripting-also known by various other terms including visual programming, algorithmic design, algorithmic modeling, or computational design- is to generate a form for a design by writing a script instead of modeling it. Before exploring it in more detail, let’s take a broader look at the area of design scripting in AEC.
#Revit to rhino windows#
The new initiative by McNeel & Associates, known as Rhino.Inside Revit, is part of a large initiative called Rhino.Inside, which allows Rhino and Grasshopper to run inside other 64-bit Windows applications such as Revit, AutoCAD, Unity, etc. While Revit already integrates with Autodesk’s own Dynamo application for design scripting, the ability to now also be able to use Grasshopper for this has the potential to dramatically improve Revit’s modeling capabilities, given that Grasshopper is the most well-established, sophisticated, and widely-used algorithmic modeling application currently available. Up until now, the only integration of Rhino and Grasshopper with a BIM application was with ARCHICAD. I recently attended an event hosted by the San Francisco Computational Design Institute (SFSDI) in which I learnt about a new initiative by McNeel & Associates, developers of Rhino, to bring the power of Rhino and its Grasshopper add-in to Revit.