Your First Conversation

Once Rook is installed and your assistant is connected, the best way to learn it is to use it. Start with the kind of work Rook is best at — the setup and tidying that surrounds your design. Just type these to your assistant with Rhino open.

Organize what you have

Open a file with some geometry in it, select a few things, and try:

“Take what I’ve selected and sort it onto layers by type.”

“Name these layers sensibly and make the structure tidy.”

Rook reads what’s there and brings order to it.

Set something out

“Lay out a 5 × 8 array of this object, evenly spaced, so I can start designing.”

“Set up a grid and reference planes for a 30 × 20 metre site.”

Notice you didn’t say how. You described the scaffold you wanted; Rook builds it and hands it back.

Ask about your model

“What’s in this file right now — layers, counts, anything unusual?”

“How many objects are on each layer?”

Handy when you open someone else’s file and need to get your bearings.

Tidy up

“Clean up the blocks — find duplicates and purge what’s unused.”

“Straighten out this Grasshopper canvas and group the related parts.”

Then take over

The pattern that makes Rook click: let it set things up, then you design.

“Get a clean grid, layers, and reference geometry ready — then I’ll take it from here.”

Tips for working with Rook

• Hand off the busywork. Organizing, naming, arraying, cleaning — that’s its sweet spot.
• Describe the outcome, not the procedure. “Sort these onto layers by type,” not a list of steps.
• Work in a back-and-forth. Ask, look, adjust. It’s a collaboration.
• Refer to things naturally — “my selection,” “these layers,” “that array.”
• If something’s off, just say so — “wrong layer,” “too far apart.”

→ Learn more: How to Ask for Things · Everyday Tasks