Advanced Grasshopper 3.0: NURBS, Mesh & Volumetric Design Systems

This workshop is structured around exploring three modeling principles through examples that reveal their unique capabilities and applications. Participants exploring tools like Pufferfish and Lunchbox for controlled curvature and pattern-driven forms, the mesh modeling introduces subdivision surfaces, physics-based form-finding, and topology optimization using Weaverbird, Mesh+, and Kangaroo for organic structures.

The core focus emphasizes volumetric and implicit modeling through voxel-based design and signed distance field operations, where participants will create complex lattice structures, gradient density systems, bio-inspired cellular patterns, agent-based growth simulations, and performance-optimized forms using Dendro, Crystallon, Monolith, and Physarealm—generating geometries that would be extremely difficult with surface or mesh-based methods alone.

Hybrid workflows demonstrate the advantage of Grasshopper to fluidly combine multiple paradigms to address geometric conversion challenges and data management when transitioning between NURBS control surfaces, volumetric operations, and output mesh.

Each session includes theoretical foundations, live demonstrations, and hands-on exercises progressing from guided tutorials to open-ended design challenges, building both technical proficiency and strategic decision-making skills.

Each session will cover complete design examples that demonstrate how multiple design and modeling strategies work together within unified scripts to achieve specific geometric outcomes.

Rather than teaching tools in isolation, participants will build integrated definitions that combine native Grasshopper components with specialized plugins—learning how data flows between NURBS operations, mesh manipulations, and volumetric processes within a single workflow.

This workshop will live-code each example from start to finish, explaining strategic decisions about when to introduce specific plugins, how to manage data structures across different geometric types, and troubleshooting common integration challenges.

This method will help Participants develop intuition for how different tools complement each other. Through this process-oriented methodology, you'll understand not just individual plugin capabilities, but how to orchestrate them strategically—transitioning from NURBS surface generation to volumetric models, or from mesh subdivision to topology manipulation, all within parametric definitions.

Each session builds toward increasingly complex integrations, with collaborative reviews allowing participants to compare approaches and discover alternative component combinations for wider design challenges.