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Artisan Grasshopper

Getting started

Requirements

  • RhinoArtisan 7, installed and licensed. Artisan for Grasshopper is part of RhinoArtisan 7 and included in its license — nothing extra to buy. The components share RhinoArtisan’s engine, check its license when they solve, and read its asset library (profiles, gem data).
  • Rhino 8 for Windows, on Windows 10 or 11. The plug-in is built against the Rhino 8 and Grasshopper 8 APIs; it does not load in Rhino 7 or earlier. Grasshopper comes with Rhino 8 — run the Grasshopper command to open it.
  • Someone at the seat. Your license covers definitions you run and supervise yourself. Solving them on a server — Rhino.Compute, Hops, Rhino.Inside, Windows Server or any unattended job — needs an Automation license; definitions your customers drive, such as a web configurator, need an OEM agreement. See what your license covers.

Install

There is nothing extra to install: the RhinoArtisan 7 installer registers Artisan for Grasshopper with Grasshopper.

  1. Install RhinoArtisan 7 on a machine that has Rhino 8.
  2. Start Rhino and run Grasshopper. Six new tabs appear at the end of the ribbon: Artisan, Gems, Gemset, Shanks, Accessories, Readers.

Your first ring

A shank builder is the shortest path to geometry, because every one of its inputs is optional. Drop a Classic component (Shanks › Classic) on the canvas and it already produces a ring using the plug-in’s default profiles.

From there, three steps make it parametric:

  1. Set a finger size. Drop a Ring Sizes value list (Shanks › Ring Sizes) — pick the system your customers use, USA or Europe or British — and wire it into Classic’s Ring Diameter. The list outputs a diameter in millimetres, which is what every shank component expects. Change the dropdown and the ring resizes.

  2. Shape the band. Add Classic - Profile (Shanks › Classic) and wire its output into Classic’s Top Profile. This is a parameter component: it bundles a set of related settings into one value. Only the inputs you actually connect are applied — anything you leave alone keeps the builder’s own default.

  3. Add stones. Add Classic - Gems Parameters and wire it into Classic’s Gems input, then set carat and shape on it. Classic’s Gems and Meshes outputs carry the stones as separate geometry from the metal, so you can render or export them apart.

Getting something out

The BReps output is Rhino geometry — bake it, or keep working with it in Grasshopper. When you want a deliverable instead, the Artisan › Exporters group takes it from there: Exporter 3DM Files, Exporter Manufacturing STL for casting, Exporter GLB Files for the web, or the base64 variants when the result is going straight into an application rather than onto disk.

Two other outputs are worth knowing about early. Taxonomy is the ring’s full parameter set as a dictionary — feed it to the matching component in the Readers tab to read any single value back out. Semantic is a plain-language sentence describing what was built, which is what a configurator or a product listing shows to a customer.

Next

How a definition is built explains the four families of component and the pattern they share — the fastest way to make sense of the full reference.