Facet turns surfaces you’ve modelled in Rhino into detailed, buildable facades: panels, fins, openings and frames. Once you know these five parts, the rest of Facet is straightforward.
Your surfaces
You model the building’s envelope in Rhino as you normally would, as surfaces or polysurfaces. Facet doesn’t replace your modelling: it works on top of it.
You tell Facet which surfaces to use by linking them (Select Surface(s) in the controller, or Add Surface in the toolbar). A linked surface stays linked: change its shape and the facade follows. Use Remove Surface to unlink it.
Frameworks
A framework is a ready-made facade system, such as panels, vertical fins or a perforated screen. You choose one in the gallery, where each framework has its own page showing what it creates and how to control it.
Choosing a framework downloads it and opens it on your surfaces. You can switch frameworks at any time; your surfaces stay the same.
The controller
The controller is the Facet panel in Rhino, where you design. It changes as you go:
- No framework yet: Select Framework opens the gallery.
- Framework open, no surfaces: Select Surface(s) asks you to pick the surfaces to use.
- Ready: the framework’s settings appear, grouped into tabs. Hold down a tab’s title to highlight the parts of the facade that tab controls.
Every change shows straight away in the Rhino viewport. While you design, the facade is a preview, not geometry in your model yet.
Bake
When you’re happy, click Bake. Facet adds the facade to your Rhino model as normal geometry that you can edit, export or draw from like anything else you’ve modelled.
You can bake as often as you like, for example to compare options side by side.
Insights
While you design, Facet keeps track of what the facade contains:
- Quantities: areas, counts and lengths of every element.
- Materials: a library of materials and rates that drives colours, transparency and costs.
- Solar: sunlight falling on the glazing, from a weather file for your site.
These update with the design, so you can see the effect of a change as you make it.
What about Grasshopper?
Every framework is built in Grasshopper, but you never have to open it. Facet keeps Grasshopper in the background, and the controller is all you need.
If you know Grasshopper, you can open the framework and look inside, adjust it, or build on it with Facet’s components.