Nick arranged for Adam, who had been the guest critic for our final review of last semester, to come and give us some tuition on Rhino, Grasshopper and Revit workflows.
Group tutorial
As the other MArch2 students and I had had quite a lot of Grasshopper tuition and guidance last year when we were in Keith Andrew's Abstract Machine studio, and none of the MArch1s had experience of this software at all, I was expecting it to mostly just be a refresher on some of the basics and a way to see how someone else uses the software and goes about putting together a Grasshopper definition, as everyone is different. Whilst this was partly the case, mostly this experience really opened my eyes up to the parametric capabilities that Revit has.
In the Revit tutorials that I had attended last semester, the focus has very much been on fairly conventional, orthogonal buildings, looking at all of the practical functionality that it has for using in practice on fairly standard projects. This had reinforced my pre-conception that I have heard many people voice, that Revit is great until you start working with curves and free-form geometry. Adam showed us that this is not the case, and that you don't even need to turn to Dynamo (which is to Revit what Grasshopper is to Rhino, loosely speaking) to achieve this in many cases. This has given me more enthusiasm about learning Revit properly, as I can see now how it is the piece of software that can pretty much do everything all in one.
Example of simple free-form massing in Revit
Individual tutorial
After the group tutorial, there was also chance to have some short one-on-one time with Adam, to discuss how our individual projects are developing. Adam's input was really insightful on points of physical modelling, virtual modelling, and thinking about how these translate to a real structure.
One of the most helpful parts was discussing the possible ways for me to use Grasshopper to replicate some of the physical vaulted forms that I had started to explore, and then test and tweak these within the virtual environment. I had spent much of the previous week looking into various possible ways of using Kangaroo, so it was good to run each of these past him. It was great that he understands that things don't always go to plan, and that in those cases Grasshopper can become a big drain on time and energy, so he suggested a few different methods, in case the first 'best case scenario' methods didn't work.
One of the Kangaroo options to explore if other more complex methods do not work successfully – the grab component, for simulating picking up fabric
Talking through the physical models was a good way to bring him up to speed on where my project had moved on to since the review in the last semester. Showing him the beginnings of a 1:10 column model that I am starting to set up, he talked through how bracing could be used, with tension rings and guy ropes, to better secure the bamboo against the forces of the stretched fabric and the casting material. These are ideas that I will now feed into that physical model and related virtual testing.
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