What is Assembler?

Assembler is a Grasshopper plugin that helps you construct and manage assemblages of parts, conceived with (but not limited to) the architectural scale in mind.

With Assembler, you can create assemblages from parts and rules for their connection, manage the criteria for the assemblage growth and its interaction with environmental geometries and data, and perform local (part) and global (assemblage) level computation on the results for analysis or post-processing.

• if you want to nosedive into the tool, skip the next 2 bullet points and read on! 👇
• if you want to understand the logic behind the tool, see Assembler logic in brief
• if you want a more detailed explanation and an introduction to the conceptual aspects of assemblages, see Assemblages, a specification

Getting Started

The best way to learn Assembler is hands on, following the Example files in numerical order.

Prerequisites

In order to use Assembler, you must have:

• Rhino 7 (Win or Mac) updated to the service release 2 or higher - not sure which one you have? In Rhino, select Help > About Rhinoceros, look for the version number on the bottom right of the appearing window
• a basic knowledge of Grasshopper functionality (data flow, data types, data structures, operations on data structures like selection, filtering, etc.)

Installation(s)

Install Assembler from Rhino Package Manager.

Example files require also:

. Human, froGH, EleFront (v4.2.2) - via the Package Manager

. Shortest Walk.

Although Assembler itself does not depend on those plugins for its functionality, they improve the overall experience and are spread over the example files:

• at the basic level, froGH smooths some parts of the workflow, Human makes the visuals easier on the eyes. Components from these plugins are widely used in almost all the examples.