STF#9 - 2025: Workshops
WS09Building Reporting Tools in Grasshopper for Structural Analysis
Booking Note
To ensure a fair workshop attendance we kindly request a limit of 2 tickets per studio/company for this workshop.
SOLD OUT
Delivered by Thornton Tomasetti | CORE Studio and Rhino Developers, McNeel
Building Reporting Tools in Grasshopper for Structural Analysis
This workshop provides structural engineers with a comprehensive guide to integrating analysis data into existing computational workflows and automating the report generation process. Participants will learn how to create a custom Grasshopper plugin to connect to applications like Microsoft Excel and Word, enabling the creation of dynamic data-driven reports from structural analysis.
The first half of the workshop is dedicated to connecting Grasshopper with Microsoft Excel/Word through COM Object interfaces. Participants will learn to use Grasshopper’s scripting components to access external APIs for bi-directional data, graphics, and geometry streaming. The session will cover creating Excel reports featuring analytical center-line diagrams with annotations, correlating them with tabular data and formulas exported from Grasshopper, and generating Word documents with embedded text and images.
The second half expands participants’ skill sets by leveraging open-source libraries. It begins with an introduction to the PDF+ plugin and its automation workflows. Participants will then receive a crash course in testing pdfSharp, the open-source library underlying the plugin, within Grasshopper’s scripting components.
The workshop concludes with an in-depth walkthrough of building a custom C# Grasshopper plugin in Visual Studio using code developed during the scripting exercises.
Expected Outcomes:
By the end, participants will have a functional plugin capable of converting structural analysis results and data into visually rich diagrams and informative PDFs.
Requirements:
Attendee Requirements:
- Intermediate knowledge of Rhino / Grasshopper
- Basic experience in C# (recommended, not required)
- Basic understanding of Karamba (recommended, not required)
Required Software – Each attendee must bring their own laptop, plus:
- PC Only (Workflows not supported for MAC)
- Rhino 3d + Grasshopper
- Karamba3D (Demo Version or higher)
- Microsoft Excel and Word
- Visual Studio 2019+
- GitHub account
- GitHub Desktop application
SOLD OUT
Sophie Moore – Thornton Tomasetti | CORE Studio
Sophie is a senior applications developer at Thornton Tomasetti | CORE Studio where she develops tools to automate engineering and design workflows. With a background in structural and facade engineering, she brings practical expertise to her role.
David Mans – Thornton Tomasetti | CORE Studio
David is the Director of AECtech and Vice President App Dev at Thornton Tomasetti | CORE studio, focusing on product development for web visualization platforms. He is also the author of over a dozen open-source plugins for Grasshopper 3d. Formerly, he was the Senior Computational Designer for Grimshaw Architects NYC, working on projects including the award-winning Terra: Sustainability Pavilion for the 2020 Dubai Expo.
Supported by:
Pedro Cortés – McNeel
Pedro is a computational designer and software developer at McNeel Europe. With an experience of more than ten years in the AEC field, Pedro has not only directed architectural projects but has also worked on the development of digital tools to empower designers to utilize cloud-based computation, facilitating collaboration and enabling the execution of computationally intensive tasks without specialized hardware.
