Reading materials and constructions JSon without restarting Rhino

[edpmay]

Hi @fadysherif ,

I don’t know of a way to do that by default (assuming you mean so that your materials show up in the standard ‘HB Search Materials’ component?) since the material set is created when GH starts up, I believe.

There are plenty of ways to load data from outside files though - and so if you are working in excel already you might be able to just pull that data in directly and build up your materials and constructions directly? We’ve had great luck using both local CSV files for that, but nowadays mostly use a cloud database (in our case AirTable) to store all our material and construction info, which is then pulled into the GH file and used to create mats and constructions without any need to reload.

You can see a rough example of what I mean here, if it is of any interest:

Workflow: Using AirTable to Manage Materials and Assemblies

Hi all, I have been experimenting with a new workflow for managing materials and assemblies lately, and thought I would share here in case it was helpful for anyone else who has trouble managing all that data in an easy way. This workflow uses AirTable, which is an online database tool, in order to collect and manage the data, then a simple Grasshopper script to download the data and build the HB-Constructions. Challenge: While I love building the models in Grasshopper, I don’t like managing…

but note that this doesn’t add the mats to the ‘Search’ set - so I’m not sure if that would still be helpful in your case, depending on what you are doing.

best,
@edpmay