Ghost Geometry

In some workflows, it is not always necessary to operate on the geometry of an object. Perhaps you are simply looking to access the object's attributes, or filter through your objects before copying them into another file.

For such cases, we have introduced an option called "Ghost Geometry", which allows you to bring an item into Grasshopper that only preserves the information about that object, while leaving the geometry behind. It does include a bounding box preview, as a way to give yourself a sense of where your items are.

Attributes

Query Attributes

Ghost geometry maintains the attributes of its object, which lets you query them, or even sort / filter them.

Deconstruct

Deconstruct Ghost

In addition to the attributes, the original Guid and Source File can be found by using the Deconstruct Ghost component.

Manifest

Manifest the Original Geometry

It may be that you'd like filter the stream to a subset of some items, and only then operate on the geometry of just those objects. To do this, you can use the Manifest component to bring in the original geometry.

Why is this useful?

This feature can be used to help limit the total amount of memory being used while running your scripts. For more information, read about eleFront and Memory Management.