Welcome to RhinoVAULT
RhinoVAULT is a Rhino plugin for the form-finding of funicular shell structures using the Thrust Network Analysis (TNA) method. Integrating principles of graphic statics, RhinoVAULT provides an intuitive and uniquely interactive approach to funicular form-finding, enabling the creation of structurally efficient and expressive shapes while offering insights into the underlying structural behavior.
RhinoVAULT is built with COMPAS framework—a Python-based framework for computational research and collaboration in architecture, engineering, and digital fabrication—and many other packages from its ecosystem. As a fully open-source tool, RhinoVAULT is accessible to all, supporting students, researchers and design professionals globally in shaping and discovering innovative compression-only shell structures.
Learning about your projects is invaluable for software development and serves as an inspiration to the structural design community. We invite you to connect with us to share projects created with RhinoVAULT or to explore opportunities for collaborations and workshops.
Happy form finding!
Open-source Research Platform
RhinoVAULT is a plugin that is specifically developed for Rhino 8 and above, built entirely with open-source packages from the rich COMPAS ecosystem. The source codes of RhinoVAULT is hosted on and accessible via GitHub, and we very much welcome your feedback. Please use the RhinoVAULT issue tracker or the COMPAS forum to submit information about any bugs, technical problems, or feature requests. You can also contribute to the source code by following the developer guide.
RhinoVAULT uses the following COMPAS packages:
Citing RhinoVAULT
RhinoVAULT is freely available under the MIT License in the hope that you will enjoy it and use it for original and creative work. It can be shared and used for academic and commercial purposes, but with proper attribution. If you use RhinoVAULT for any projects, publications or other applications, please cite:
Disclaimer
Although being developed and tested thoroughly, RhinoVAULT may contains errors – therefore no guarantee can be given that RhinoVAULT always computes correct results. Use of RhinoVAULT is entirely at your own risk, and please read the legal terms carefully before using RhinoVAULT.
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