Ramp Upgrade Project V3

We’re back with another update on the Ramp Upgrade Project! If you don’t already know what this means, check out this post by Jorge from October 2018 and a followup to that on this post I wrote before Christmas 2018.

Since then we’ve been optimizing this tool and adding more functionality. This includes a major rewrite to the original ramp object that was laden with dependencies. The new optimized script is streamlined and requires no other plugins, we’ve also tested this on Rhino 5 & Rhino 6 on Windows and Mac and are very excited to put this out into the world of BIM and Computational Design to see how people use this to streamline their workflows.

credits: miguel-sousa

Now the Enzyme Ramp Tool has 2 custom user objects – Ramp from 2D Walking Line & Ramp from Boundary Curves

Input Curves for ‘Ramp from 2D Walking Line’

The first one is called Ramp from 2D Walking Line, as the name suggests this takes in the ‘walking line’. The walking line can be a 1, 2 or 3° curve defined by the user. Apart from this, the user must input Height at the Base of the Ramp, Height at the Top of the Ramp, Ramp Thickness & Ramp Width. There’s also built-in visualization tools, these also require inputs like Height of Cutting Plane, Radius of starting Circle, Arrowhead Length and Arrowhead Scale. The outputs of this Object are clustered, the first two outputs are for geometry (Ramp Mesh & 3D Curve), the next 3 outputs display information (Curvature Degree, Length of the Ramp & Slope %) and the last 2 outputs are 2D Visualization geometry that can be sent to Archicad for 2D Visualization.

Ramp from 2D Walking Line

The second object is called Ramp from Boundary Curves, as the name suggests this takes as input Boundary Curves. These cab also be 1, 2 or 3° curves defined by the user. As before, the user must input Height at the Base of the Ramp, Height at the Top of the Ramp, Ramp Thickness.

The main difference in this is that there’s another input for Ramp Method. This is quite important as there’s currently 3 methods to make this Ramp as it was difficult to find a global solution that satisfied all the variations of how this object can be used and the user must toggle through the 3 methods to find one that works best for the case.

Like in the first object, there’s also built-in visualization tools, these also require inputs like Height of Cutting Plane, Radius of starting Circle, Arrowhead Length and Arrowhead Scale. The outputs of this Object are clustered, the first two outputs are for geometry (Ramp Mesh & 3D Curve), the next 3 outputs display information (Curvature Degree, Length of the Ramp & Slope %) and the last 2 outputs are 2D Visualization geometry that can be sent to Archicad for 2D Visualization.

Input Curves for ‘Ramp from Boundary Curves’
‘Ramp from Boundary Curves’

Apart from this, we’ve also worked on a series of videos that guide you on how you can use these objects.

Ramp from Walking Line Tutorial

Ramp from Boundary Curves Tutorial
Grasshopper – Archicad Live Connection Tutorial

You can download the Custom User Objects, & the example files here.
Download and save the file in the User Objects Folder in Grasshopper.