PP snippets are example files containing chains of components that, as stand-alone examples or plugged into any other example performing an assemblage, show some possibilities of how to exploit object-based and contextual information in an Assemblage.

Those are by far not the only thing one can do, just a small collection of possibilities. The key insight is that they are not obligatory push-button mechanical operations, they must be part of a strategy. To understand and go beyond the examples, one should always ask oneself: “What is this for? What can I do with it? What do I WANT to do/try/look for?”

• Stand-alone examples come with a Rhino file with the same filename. In any case, they can also be plugged into other definitions just like any of the PP snippets.
• Plug-in snippets always contain relays or components where data from the simulation must be plugged in to perform the desired process.

For example, take the display Assemblage snippet:

The two relays on the left indicate what sort of data must be plugged in to make this snippet work.

plugging a snippet

You probably already know that you can open a Grasshopper file just by dragging and dropping it on the canvas. The easiest process is to open a snippet this wat and then copy-paste the components between definitions.

Here’s a slight variation: while you are dragging the file, if you hover on the canvas and look the top-left corner (under the green “Open file” icon), you will notice a kind of page flip animation: if you drag your file there (hold on to your mouse button and don’t just let go yet) you will uncover a range of options:

Group Files allows the insertion of a gh file as an individual group.

Beware that, once you choose one of the options, it will become the standard operation Grasshopper will perform when dragging on the canvas (you can always change it from the same menu though).

For example, I can drag and drop as a Group the Display Assemblage Snippet inside a definition (cluster color is automatically assigned):

You can get rid of the header and connect the necessary data:

Voilà.