From grasshopper.com: “Grasshopper® is a graphical algorithm editor tightly integrated with Rhino’s 3-D modeling tools. Unlike RhinoScript, Grasshopper requires no knowledge of programming or scripting, but still allows designers to build form generators from the simple to the awe-inspiring.” It allows geometric operations to be automated and programmed for design exploration.

Through its support of plug-ins, Grasshopper can also be extended to automate other processes that operate on geometry. Intact.Simulation for Grasshopper is just one example of these types of extensions.

Grasshopper supports a wide range of data types. Here we'll only cover the basic types that are used by Intact.Simulation.

• Numbers -
• Vectors
• Lines
• Surfaces (open or closed)
• Polysurfaces (open or closed)
• Meshes (open or closed)

Connectors define the flow of data from the output of one component into the input of another. Connectors are inserted by clicking and dragging from the output node of one component to the input node of another - clicking and dragging in the opposite direction works as well. Connectors may be deleted by right-clicking on a node's label and choosing Disconnect.