Karamba3D for GH2

Project Overview

Developed an advanced Karamba3D plugin for Grasshopper 2—despite its Alpha-stage status and the absence of official SDK/documentation—by architecting a unified, cross-version framework that supports both Grasshopper 1 and 2. This involved decoupling core computation logic from platform-specific UI and component implementations, enabling seamless integration and future scalability across multiple visual scripting environments.

Key Technical Contributions

• Decoupled Architecture: Designed a modular architecture that isolates the business logic into a self-contained library. This approach allowed the core algorithms to be referenced by distinct Grasshopper plugin projects (GH1 and GH2), thereby reducing code duplication and easing maintenance.

• Component Unification: Engineered a unified component system through the development of a base component class and corresponding wrapper classes. These wrappers adapt to the differing APIs and data structures between GH1 (using GH_Structure<IGH_Goo>) and GH2 (utilizing Tree<T>). Conditional compilation symbols were employed to manage platform-specific implementations seamlessly.

• UI & Data Structures Integration:

  • Implemented unified interfaces for UI widget management, consolidating disparate UI elements (e.g., sliders, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdown menus) to work across both Grasshopper versions.

  • Developed a custom DataTree<T> wrapper to harmonize the differences in data tree implementations, ensuring consistency in data access, manipulation, and conversion between GH1 and GH2 structures.

• Adaptability & Testing: Overcame the challenges of frequent API changes in GH2 by creating a flexible system that switches between GH1 and GH2 compilations via compile-time symbols, allowing iterative testing and rapid adaptation. Detailed internal reports and development logs documented every phase—from initial design to debugging issues (such as UI widget instabilities in GH2)—and provided robust insights into architectural decisions.

Impact and Future DirectionsThis project not only advanced Karamba3D's plugin capabilities by bridging the gap between legacy and upcoming Grasshopper environments but also laid a solid foundation for integrating additional visual scripting platforms in the future.

Accompanying development logs and demo videos further illustrate the technical depth and iterative refinements that drove the successful completion of this challenging project.