Imperial Units in Grasshopper Converter Component

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by Dušan Cvetković
Dušan Cvetković
Published September 8, 2023

Grasshopper is a powerful parametric modeling tool for Rhino. However, it works primarily with metric units. This can cause headaches for users who prefer imperial units like feet and inches. Thankfully, there is an easy workaround to get imperial values into Grasshopper-compatible decimals.

Imperial Units in Grasshopper Converter

The Challenge of Imperial Units in Grasshopper

As a metric-centric program, Grasshopper takes number inputs through sliders and panels. This makes entering imperial units in Grassshopper a bit tricky. While you can manually convert feet and inches to decimals, it's inefficient. Fortunately, we can build a simple Grasshopper component to handle the conversion automatically.

Imperial Units in Grasshopper Converter Steps

Follow these steps to create a custom Grasshopper component for imperial units:

  • Place each imperial value (feet, inches, fractions) in separate branches.
  • Categorize the data by values with feet vs. just inches. Use a single quotation mark to separate feet from inches.
  • Split out the feet and inch values into separate indexes.
  • Replace missing values with zeroes.
  • Remove unnecessary zeros from the inches list.
  • Trim the data lists to match up values.
  • Merge the feet and inches lists into one master list.
  • Replace dashes with spaces to standardize the format.
  • Split inches from fractions using spaces as dividers.
  • Convert numbers to decimals with the Number panel.
  • Sum fractions and inches using addition component.
  • Multiply feet by 12 and add to summed inches for total inches.
  • Divide inch total by 12 and add to feet for total feet.
  • Multiply inches by 0.0254 to convert to meters.
Imperial Units in Grasshopper Converter Algorithm

Download the Imperial Converter Here

If you'd like to follow along with the tutorial and use our imperial converter component, you can download it here. Just let us know where you'd like us to send it...

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Table of Contents
The Challenge of Imperial Units in Grasshopper
Imperial Units in Grasshopper Converter Steps
Download the Imperial Converter Here
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About the Author

Dušan Cvetković is a professional architect from Serbia and official Authorized Rhino Trainer with international experience in the industry. Collaborated with numerous clients all around the world in the field of architecture design, 3D modeling and software education. He's been teaching Rhinoceros3D to thousands of architects through How to Rhino community and various social media channels.