Grasshopper: the future of parametric?

When I first heard about Grasshopper–the “parametric” Rhino plug-in currently under development at McNeal–I dismissed it. From a superficial standpoint, the demos appeared gimmicky at best, and useless to just about anyone but Frank Gehry.

I was wrong.

Grasshopper is the beginnings of a completely node-based parametric engine rooted within Rhino. The only other truly similar parametric package on the market today is Catia, and even it has a rather confusing way of visualizing its history tree. Grasshopper stands to turn the parametric design world on its head, by making parametric design easy enough–and visually-oriented enough–for the average designer or architect to embrace. I downloaded my first copy two hours ago, and I am already beginning to get the hang of it.

The current beta of the Grasshopper plugin is lacking some key node types, such as BlendSrf and NetworkSrf, but we are assured that these tools are on their way. Once these and a few other key features are implemented, I see no reason why Grasshopper could not become a primary surfacing tool for many people, and at least a fantastic conceptualization tool for many others.

I have always been a proponent of Rhino in combination with SpaceClaim for solid operations. With Rhino, the completed version of Grasshopper, and SpaceClaim, I might well relegate SolidWorks to the second shelf.

Bravo, McNeal!