[FormFollowsFunc]

Am I wrong in thinking that Grasshopper is procedural modeling and not parametric modeling? Parametric modeing is used in software like Solid Works where you don’t have nodes but have parameters, a constraint system and construction history. Solid Works was developed in the 90s while Grasshopper came out in 2007. Another is example is Pro/Engineer from Parametric Technology Company (PTC) which came out in 1988. Patrik Schumacher, an architect coined the term parametricism in 2008. His employees created node graphs in Grasshopper while he just tweaked the parameters. I wonder if that’s why he came up with the term. Grasshopper has parameters but what makes it different from industrial design CAD is that you construct geometry with a series of nodes i.e. a procedure.

[Duanemclemore]

Grasshopper doesn't have to be used strictly "procedurally" as you can reference in geometry from Rhino. However, some of us try to work as procedurally as possible - creating everything strictly within Grasshopper if at all possible. It -is- also possible to use it as a very strong parametric design tool. There is no looping exposed to the user in a normal gh script - but used in the way I think is best, you're always applying conditional logic to make the data and operations do what you want.

A quick example - you can use what are called gates and filters in Grasshopper, so you can do things like route faces that meet some criterion you've set through one set of operations and those which don't through another. Then you can use pattern matching or other operations to weave the data back together in the proper order...

[dmos62]

You seem insightful on this subject. What other parametric design tools, techniques or technologies do you consider noteworthy?