In many cases, you and your stakeholders and collaborators want to share and iterate on design which includes both geometry and parameters. Data Exchange – Grasshopper connector* makes it easy. In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through a scenario where a subset of existing design data is pulled into a data exchange and new metadata (i.e., custom parameters) are added. Feel free to follow along using the attached Grasshopper script.
* As of this post, Data Exchange – Dynamo Connector doesn’t support writing parameters.
- After pulling the DXData from an existing data exchange, use the “Filter By Parameter” component to get elements that are structural columns or structural framing. Note that the “Filter By Parameter” component will match any of your filter criteria (i.e., logical OR).
Filter by Parameters
- Use “Bake” component to bake DXData into Rhino. Switching to Rhino, you can see all the parameters in the “Attribute User Text” panel. Now it’s time to remove the parameters you are not interested in and add your own custom parameters. Select all objects in Rhino, then using Attribute User Text properties panel, remove all parameters except “Category” and “Edited by”, add the “Fill Policy” parameter, and fill in “Edited by”.
Edit Parameters
- Use the “Read Object” component to transfer the baked objects back to Grasshopper and send them to the data exchange that you share with your structural engineering team. You can verify that the parameters are indeed in your exchange, for example, using the ACC viewer.
ACC ViewerAs a bonus, a C# script component called “Link To Exchange” is included in the script. You can take the inputs from the "Exchange Info" component, once you get the link, paste it in your browsers’ address bar, or use a component such as Launch URL to view the exchange at ACC.
Hope you find this tutorial useful. Please feel free to share your work and/or challenges; we are always here to listen, help, and cheer you up!
