if you don't have an understanding of how Grasshopper and Rhino work, don't even try to use them in a design setting.

There are loads of good tutorials online that show you how to use the programmes, but if you use them without a sense of what you want to achieve or an understanding of your inputs, you will end up with a banal looking form that has no relevance to any design issues apart from form.

The learning curve to be able to use these tools in a meanigful way is quite long... you will be able to create things easily.. but being able to control your creation is a whole other level that most people don't even bother getting to. That being said, they can be used to create designs unlike anything else, but those are the result of intelligent input from the user.

thanks AFL. I just finished Advanced Parametric Modelling as my elective for my masters last Fall, part of it was learning GH. 

on the process, surprisingly, GH had provided answers to my personal queries about architecture and parametricism themselves. I understand the learning curve and yes  it may indeed take a while before someone gets to master it.Hell, I may need to relearn math and algorithm to fully understand it.

My question is just out of curiosity that goes to the architects out there- how they use GH in their practices/firms, how GH is synced with CAD once the design progresses to the next stage, which is 2d documentation etc.

question!

I heard GH is a pluggin for Rhino.

is this mean you have to know Rhino in order to learn GH?

ah ok... should have been more specific in your initial question.:) there are so many students thinking they need to get into these design methods but have no idea about them.

From my experience, rhino and GH are used a lot in concept/schematic design and transfering the resulting forms into cad/construction documents is extremely difficult which is why a lot of designs change/get more simplified or don't get built at all.

Digital project/Catia however can produce similar results as Rhino/GH and can also be used on the constrution site as proven by Gehry. However, the multi-million dollar project to fix the Stata center shows the potential for poor contruction even with BIM.

GH is a plugin for Rhino.... It is definately necessary to understand at least the basics of Rhino and how it models to use GH.

@AFLArch

Thanks