Assistant Professor V. Mitch McEwen / Black Box

This brief tutorial teaches importing OpenStreetMap (OSM) data into Grasshopper, including installing the necessary free plug-in Elk 2. Grasshopper runs as an algorithmic editor in Rhino.  

Structure in two parts, this tutorial will teach you how to:

- Find opensource geospatial data

- Import data into Grasshopper

- Create a data-driven map in Grasshopper

Prep

1) If you have not already done so, download and install Grasshopper for Rhino.  

http://www.rhino3d.com/download/grasshopper/1.0/wip?PageSpeed=noscript

2) Make a user account on http://www.food4rhino.com/

3) Download the Elk v2.2.2 plugin http://www.food4rhino.com/app/elk/

Part 1

4) Locate the site area on OpenStreetMap: www.openstreetmap.org

Locate your map area.  For intro purposes the bounds can be fairly arbitrary.  For overall pedestrian data you may want the Cycle Map.

5) Click the green Export button toward the upper left.  Coordinates, and a blue Export button will appear.  Jot down the coordinates (they will be helpful later), and click the Blue export button.

6) Save that OSM file in a location that you can easily type out.  You might want to create a new URB391B folder at the Local Disk (C:) level, so that your file location might be C:\URB391B\map.osm

Part 2

In Part 2 you begin to produce a map from the OSM data you exported.  This map will be generated from points, and you will immediately work with simple geometric relationships on the algorithmic editor Grasshopper.

1) Open Rhino. Open Grasshopper by typing Grasshopper in the Rhino Command-line (at the top where it says Command:).

2) In Grasshopper, click on the tab all the way to the right at the top to bring up Extra components.  You will find Elk there.  From the group of Elk components, select the Location component, and drag it to the gridded area.

3) Create a Panel (double click on the gridded area and type Panel into the search field), and type in the location of your OSM file.  This will beC:\URB391B\map.osm or something similar.

4) Link this text panel to the Loc component by dragging from the left to the right between the middle of each component edge.

5) Pull an OSM component down from the Elk tab and connect the O to OSM and F to File. Right click the component, and select building under Feature Type.

6) You should now see a network of points appear in the Rhino view.  If not, expand Plan view and zoom out and pan until you do. Now you can choose to reveal as lines by connecting Polyline components to the predominant outputs of the buildings.

8) Add more OSM components and experiment. Hover over the input and output to understand the data that the component is working with. Notice that you will have to right-click each component and assign it a different Feature Type to show different parts of the plan.

9) Experiment adding Sub-Feature Types, too (also by right-clicking). For example, roads would have the sub-features of highways, major roads, minor roads, and so on.

10) Save your Grasshopper file.  “Bake” the Pline Geometry from Grasshopper and Save to Rhino layers. Click “Yes please” to group the geometry as you Bake it.