Getting started overview: -------------------------------------------------------------------
First step is to create a rectangular grid using one of the tools in Grid tab. Some of these components take a list of points, which you can generate using GH standard components, or divide a curve using one of the tools under "Curve" tab of PanelingTools.
Once a grid is created, you can shuffle it using one of the attraction methods under Grid Attractors tab. One output is the shuffled grid, another output is the normalized weights based on the attraction method that can be used for variable offset or variable paneling for example.
Grid Utility tab helps you do things like extracting points from the grid, replace points, extract center grid, expand grids, create surface from grid, etc.
Panel2D tab has many ways to panel the rectangular grid and populate 2D components.
Panel3D will come next... Stay tuned.
If you used PanelingTools plugin for Rhino, then the Parameters tab is for you. You can use PanelingTools for Rhino to create your grid, then input into GH as a tree structure using "Select" component. The "Bake" components is to bake a grid in a format that can be used by PanelingTools plugin for Rhino. If you only work with GH, then you can safely ignore this tab.
Note: All input/output of PanelingTools Add-on to GH use standard geometry and you can use standard GH components to manipulate them. Grids for example are nothing but simple tree structures (no nesting). You can think of it as a list of rows or paths that contain certain number of leafs or elements.
It is important to try to avoid FLATTENING a grid. If you have to flatten a grid, there is a utility to recompose it if you knew the number of rows, but seriously, stay away from flattening!
Feedback:
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Please feel free to post bugs, questions and suggestions to improve the tools. Please use the discussion of this group to post question when possible.
PanelingTools Rhino 5.0 Beta (for Windows 64 & 32 Bits): (Updated March 4, 2012)
PanelingTools for Rhino 4.0 SR8 and SR9: ( Last Update January 5 - please note that all new features are added to PanelingTools for Rhino 5.0 Beta only)
PanelingTools plugin is part of the Rhino for Mac WIP... . Please note that the Paneling Tools menu is not implemented since custom user interface changes are not yet working on the Mac, but all the commands are available. Type “pt” to see all Paneling Tools commands.
Documentation and Other Downloads:
Download PanelingTools Manual for detailed description of paneling process and commands. (Updated April 13 2010)
Download PanelingTools.zip and extract to any location on your computer.
Drag and drop PanelingTools.rhp file to an open session of Rhino. The plugin should now loaded. You need to do this once. Next time you open Rhino, PanelingTools plugin will load after you call a plugin command for the first time in that session. Another way to load a plugin is to use a PluginManager command and Install PanelingTools.rhp.
Drag and drop PanelingTools.tb (toolbars) to an open Rhino session. Toolbars will not show at this point. To view them, you need to go to Tools/Toolbar Layout, select PanelingTools and check its menus. Next time you open Rhino, toolbars will show in your workspace.
If you use Monkey RhinoScript Editor then you need to save PanelingTools.syntaxml file in ../Monkey/Resources folder. This way PanelingTools scripting methods will show on the left hand side tree of Monkey.