Updates You May Have Missed

With my new business keeping me busy, I haven't had as much time as I would like to keep TheProvingGround.org as up to date as I would like. Make no mistake, I am still very much committed to keeping this blog going and sharing some of my more recent computational design explorations.  If you have been following any of my social media accounts, you may have noticed that there have been several updates to LunchBox, Rhynamo, and other tools making their way out into the wild.

Here is a summary of what you may have missed in recent months...

Playing Nice with JSON

In both LunchBox for Dynamo AND Grasshopper, the LunchBox toolkit now has several new nodes converting between JSON, XML, datasets, and more.  I like being able to convert my data between various formats with ease and these new tools hopefully make this easier

Serialize Dynamo data as JSON

Grasshopper Tree to XML and converted to JSON

Extended Excel Tools in Dynamo

Grasshopper and Dynamo both have some great solutions for working with Excel.  Within Dynamo, I created a few helpful nodes for serializing Excel data to .NET DataTables.  These nodes make it easy to serialize your tables so they can be queried like a database or converted to other formats like XML and JSON.

New LunchBox Excel nodes for Dynamo

Dynamo 0.9 Support

Rhynamo and LunchBox have been upgraded to the latest version of Dynamo (0.9) and have been given some general facelift for use with new versions.

Get the latest tools here....

Rhynamo and LunchBox Updates

LunchBox element collectors now have toggle inputs to better control updates with Revit.

The end of the winter is near (I hope!)... I've already started my spring cleaning by addressing some new features and enhancements to LunchBox and Rhynamo.  This past week, new versions of both Dynamo packages have been published to the package manager.  Be sure to check them out!

LunchBox

• Toggle inputs for all element collection nodes.  This allows the user to turn off collection and also force a refresh to the node if there is a change to the Revit model
• MEP Space collection
• New outputs for various collection nodes.

Rhynamo

• Get Text object data from Rhino models.
• Get User Data from Rhino geometry including User Strings and User Dictionaries
• Set User Data on exported geometry including User Strings and User Dictionaries.
• Check out the Rhynamo repo on Bitbucket to track these changes.
• Read my latest Blog post over at CASE about Rhynamo and Open Source tools.

User String and Dictionary nodes let us read custom user data that is assigned to Rhino geometry.

An example of round tripping Rhino geometry and assigning Revit properties as User Data.

A new node for getting text object data from Rhino.

Rhynamo - Refactored and Data-centric

The new version of Rhynamo exposes new data from 3DM files 

There is much more to Rhino files than NURBS geometry.  This latest release of Rhynamo extends the users ability to access different data and objects within a Rhino file from Dynamo... from general file information, to layers, or materials.  Geometry conversions will also return other important information about the object including GUIDs, layers, colors, and names.

In order to better develop this new functionality, the Rhynamo library has been refactored Rhynamo's for better organization... this will almost certainly break existing definitions that use older versions, but this is an important evolutionary step for this tool.  Older versions are still downloadable on the package manager for legacy use.

Visit the Rhynamo source to get the latest...

Geometry converters also return information about object GUIDs, names, layers, and colors.

Materials, layers, linetypes, hatch patterns, and camera view data is now available.

Rhynamo is Open Source!

Rhynamo:  An Open Source Tool for Reading and Writing Rhino files with Dynamo

On behalf of CASE, I am happy to announce that the source code for Rhynamo has been published to BitBucket.org.  Rhynamo is an open source project under the MIT license and is maintained by CASE.

Free builds of Rhynamo have already been made available through the Package Manager.

We are very excited to be contributing to the BIM and computational design community with this tool kit that enables tighter integration between popular design authoring tools.  We are committed to helping the AECO industry address their interoperability challenges.  Tools, like Rhynamo, are only one small piece of that puzzle.

A few notes about the project...

• The project his hosted on BitBucket.org... it's a great service, check it out!
• I highly recommend Source Tree as a tool for managing your repos
• Rhynamo is a C# project being developed with Visual Studio (I am using 2013)
• The project relies heavily on McNeel's OpenNURBS library.
• Because it relies on OpenNURBS, you do not need Rhino to work on the project (most of the time)
• Are you interested in learning Dynamo/Rhynamo?  Do you have questions about interoperability?  Reach out to us...

If you are going to be at Autodesk University in Las Vegas this week, be sure to check out what CASE is up to... and don't miss our party!

Visit the BitBucket Repo and Get the SOURCE!

https://bitbucket.org/caseinc/rhynamo

Get the Rhynamo Package!

Get Rhynamo now through the Dynamo package manager

Rhynamo is now an official Dynamo package... freely available to the public!  I am still putting the finishing touches on the source code repository (more on that soon!), but that shouldn't stop you from getting the latest build of Rhynamo to try out in your work.

The private beta was very successful with over 300 people testing Rhynamo and providing very valuable feedback.  There is still work to do to improve the tool, but now that we have been actively using it on our own projects at CASE, we feel it is ready for the greater BIM and Computational Design community to start making use of it.

So give it a try!  Rhynamo is designed to work with the latest builds of Dynamo (0.7.4 or later).

• Be sure you get the latest daily Dynamo build (I am using 0.7.5) to use the tool!  
• You can download Rhynamo right now using the Dynamo package manager.
• Rhynamo also comes with a few example files and a read me so you can get oriented.

Rhynamo - An Open Source Project

Coding Rhynamo from my hotel room at The Standard in Los Angeles

If you who were paying attention to my Twitter feed During ACADIA, you may have caught that I made a special announcement regarding Rhynamo, the OpenNURBS file reader/writer for Dynamo:

As of December 1, CASE will release Rhynamo as an open source project.

What does that mean? It means that we will continue to be releasing and developing free builds of the tool so you can continue to use Rhynamo in your work. It also means that brave coders out there will have the opportunity to leverage the Rhynamo source code to customize their workflow with OpenNURBS and Dynamo and develop new integrations.

Rhynamo only attempts to address a small piece of the larger design and production workflow. However, I believe that tools like Rhynamo provide us with a road map for what we, as users, should be expecting from our ecosystem of tools:

• We need more fluid exchanges of data throughout the design process
• We need higher levels of compatibility between authoring platforms
• We need open file formats and APIs that let us customize our workflow

Projects like McNeel’s OpenNURBS and the Dynamo project should not be exceptions…they should be the rule.

I still have some code commenting, clean-up, and feature development to do ahead of December before release the project into the wild... but for those of you who are already relying on Rhynamo in your workflow, rest assured that the tool is not going anywhere and will continue to be developed into 2015.

I also want to thank the more than 300 testers who signed up to try out Rhynamo in the past two months.  Their contributions have been very appreciated and I hope they continue to play along as we enter into phase 2 :)

More info to follow....

Reading in a Rhino file containing a Hexagonal paneling system

Mapping complex Rhino panels to Revit Adaptive components

Creating a Dynamo surface and saving geometry as a Rhino 3DM.

Completed during the ACADIA 2014 Hackathon, this shows Rhynamo sending 'live' commands to Rhino.

Introducing RHYNAMO: Apply for BETA Testing!

Demoing Rhynamo for the Central States BIM workshop

I just finished up a string of presentations at the Central States BIM Workshops hosted here in Omaha.  I announced a private beta for a new Dynamo node library:  RHYNAMO.

Rhynamo is a plug-in that lets you read and write the Rhino 3DM file format within Dynamo.  This opens up a lot of interoperability potential between Rhino, Grasshopper, Dynamo, Revit, and more. I am excited to get more folks to try this out!

Apply for the Rhynamo Private Beta here...