Rhino, Grasshopper and Archicad: Algorithmic Design in the BIM Process

This recording closes the series of five webinars with which SIMBIM presented Archicad 23. After the sessions devoted to what the version brought and to the connection with dRofus, Solibri and Bluebeam Revu, this last one deals with algorithmic design and with the connection between Rhino, Grasshopper and Archicad. The session is led by Joana Alsasua, BIM consultant at SIMBIM, with Bernat Lorente, of McNeel Europa. Bernat Lorente introduces the tools: Rhino as a 3D modeller used in architecture, jewellery or the motor industry, and Grasshopper as an interface that chains components together to describe a sequence of actions rather than modelling a fixed geometry. Using the analogy of the coffee machine, he explains the difference between a closed process and a definition in which you can go back to any point and see how the result changes. He then runs through plugins such as Kangaroo, Ladybug or Karamba, which add flow simulation, solar analysis and structural calculation. He then works live in Grasshopper: referencing Rhino geometry, creating a polygon controlled by a slider, repeating it with the Move and Series components, obtaining a surface with Loft and showing how to write Python inside the canvas itself. Joana Alsasua takes the session up again with a review of the import and export add-ons between Rhino and Archicad and of the GDL Converter for library objects, and focuses on the live connection with Grasshopper, which turns geometry into building elements, works in both directions and reflects changes in real time. She distinguishes two workflows: building in Rhino or Grasshopper and taking the elements into Archicad, or starting from Archicad elements and deconstructing them in Grasshopper in order to edit their geometry, their attributes and their data. In the demonstration, two surfaces modelled in Rhino are sectioned with the Contour component and the resulting lines are materialised as slabs in Archicad with the Slab component, whose composite is adjusted from Slab Settings. The session ends with three examples: a double-skin sports centre in which an Archicad surface serves as the reference for generating columns and beams that curve when that skin is modified; a partly buried restaurant analysed with Ladybug, whose parametric complex profiles are edited from Grasshopper; and the case study of the Irina Viner-Usmanova Rhythmic Gymnastics Centre in Moscow, where algorithmic design was applied to the roof and to the optimisation of its steel structure.