Designers
Preliminaries
What is Grasshopper?
ShapeDiver lets designers upload parametric 3D models created with Grasshopper. If you are wondering what Grasshopper is, you are in luck because we have created a quick introduction video to get you started:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7wwqEH9FPwAt ShapeDiver, we love Rhino and Grasshopper. Rhino is an affordable but powerful software with a strong community and an ecosystem of tools that any developer can build on top of the core software, making it even more powerful and full of application-specific functionalities.
Try Rhino and Grasshopper
If you want to give Rhino and Grasshopper a try, you can enjoy a generous 90-day free trial by downloading the latest version of Rhino straight from the website. In this period, you can use all the functionalities of Rhino without restrictions.
In particular, you will also be able to download and use any free Rhino and Grasshopper plugins, including the ShapeDiver plugin for Grasshopper. Check out our video about what Grasshopper plugins are for more information.
Create your first definition
Youtube is full of great resources to get started with Grasshopper. We recommend this beginner tutorial from Parametric House, among many other excellent ones.
Uploading a Grasshopper definition to ShapeDiver
Once you have created a free ShapeDiver account, you will be able to start uploading your Grasshopper definitions to ShapeDiver! There are a few guidelines that you might want to check before uploading, to avoid any bad surprises. Most of them are common sense, for example:
Internalize any referenced Rhino geometry! You are only uploading a Grasshopper definition, therefore you cannot rely on a Rhino document in your definition.
Pay attention to which Grasshopper plugins you are using. Make sure they are included in the list of supported third-party plugins.
Make sure your definition fits the limitations of your free account, in particular in size and computation time of the solutions.
We have a great section explaining how you can best prepare your Grasshopper definitions in order to build ShapeDiver models.
The ShapeDiver plugin for Grasshopper
While it is not strictly necessary, we strongly recommend you download the ShapeDiver plugin for Grasshopper, and use it in the definition you upload. Among many useful features in the context of online 3D applications, it lets you create great-looking materials for the online viewer, and define file import and export functionalities which open up a wide range of applications.
Examples to get started
We have created a set of example Grasshopper definitions that also act as hands-on tutorials for the basic concepts of ShapeDiver. Each definition is full of notes and comments explaining the essentials you need to know when working in Grasshopper with the goal of uploading your work to ShapeDiver.