Inflatables Pluging for Grasshopper

Getting Started

Building C++ Libraries

The C++ code relies on Boost, which must be installed separately.

The numerical solver depends on Catamari, which will be downloaded through the cmake file but require the meson build system. Alternatively one can choose to use the slower CHOLMOD/UMFPACK library, which must be installed separately.

The code also relies on several dependencies that are included as submodules: MeshFEM, libigl,

Finally, it includes a version of Keenan Crane's stripe patterns code modified to generate fusing curve patterns and fix a few issues with boundary handling.

macOS

You can install all the mandatory dependencies on macOS with MacPorts. When installing SuiteSparse, be sure to get a version linked against Accelerate.framework rather than OpenBLAS; on MacPorts this is achieved by requesting the accelerate variant, which is no longer the default. Simulations will run over 2x slower under OpenBLAS.

# Build/version control tools, C++ code dependencies
sudo port install cmake boost ninja meson gmp mpfr
sudo port install SuiteSparse +accelerate

# Download CGAL 4.14.3
curl -LO https://github.com/CGAL/cgal/releases/download/releases%2FCGAL-4.14.3/CGAL-4.14.3.tar.xz
tar xf CGAL-4.14.3.tar.xz
cd CGAL-4.14.3

# Build CGAL 4 manually
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$HOME/cgal4 \
      -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
      -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH="/opt/local" \
      -DWITH_CGAL_Core=ON .
make -j$(sysctl -n hw.logicalcpu)
make install

# Set environment variable
export CGAL_DIR=$HOME/cgal4/lib/CGAL

Obtaining and Building

Clone this repository recursively so that its submodules are also downloaded:

git clone --recursive git@github.com:EPFL-LGG/inflatablesGH.git

Build the C++ code and its Python bindings using cmake and your favorite build system. For example, with ninja:

cd inflatablesGH_public
mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -GNinja
ninja

Note that Catamari's performance is affected by the build settings, so to get best performance you'll want to choose the Release (not RelWithAssert) build type and enable MESHFEM_VECTORIZE.

Building C# Plugin

The C# plugin is compatible only with Rhino 7 and 8 for Mac with Intel processors, as well as Rhino 8 with ARM processors.

Visual Studio for Mac (if not installed)

Download and install Visual Studio 2022

Check if Mono is installed with Visual Studio. Open Visual Studio for Mac and click on 'Visual Studio' in the top menu bar. Select 'About Visual Studio' from the dropdown menu and, in the dialog that opens, you should see version information and installed components. If Mono is not listed, download and install Mono

Download the latest RhinoVisualStudioExtensions. Launch Visual Studio => Navigate to Visual Studio>Extensions.. => Click "Install from file" => Select the .mpack file.

Quit and Restart Visual Studio => Navigate to Extensions Studio>Add-ins..>Installed tab => Verify that RhinoCommon Plugin Support exists under the Debugging category.

Building

Open .sln project from inflatablesGH/ghPlugins/InflatableSheet/ in Visual Studio and build it. This will copy all the .dll and .gha files (plugin files) in inflatablesGH/bin/isheet. The bin folder already contains the C++ library (.dylib file).

If the 'bin' folder is not referenced in Grasshopper, open Rhino, enter GrasshopperDeveloperSettings into the Command console, and add the path to the 'bin' folder to the Library Folders. Restart Rhino