Adaptive Components_Sullivan

To decide whether to use Grasshopper or Digital Project is heavily influenced upon whether you want an interesting array, or the degree of tectonic soundness the object your thinking of needs. 

From what I've encountered with Grasshopper, its strengths lie within its almost obscene levels of ease with which one can array a series of forms to create interesting textures.  Its interface allows a user to get a sense of how something will look & to experiment with form before committing to a real-time change (via bake). In its favor, it is highly sympathetic to beginning parametric designers (boxes turn red if something isn't working, how nice is that??) But, to its own disservice, this flexibility in order to create a "sketch" of a form, may create unwanted tectonic falsifications, if one was attempt fabrication of a structure. Additionally, Grasshopper has an interesting "duality" feature; it can allow multiple effects on top of others, similar in the way photoshop allows multiple filters affecting the same photo. But again, these seem like smoke and mirrors.

Herein lies the saving grace of Digital Project: this is software to build hardware. Based on the need for something (such as an airplane) to perform, to be a tangible object in reality, or to be structurally sound, the developers of Digital Project made the software perform in a way which creates objects that respond to these needs. For example, by forming a connection of two or three pipes which become a joint for a tension cable bridge, Digital Project processes the three pipes into one singularity. In contrast, Rhino/Grasshopper will not treat the three pipes as if they belong to a system unless you do some crafty boolean surgery.  Digital Project creates connections where Grasshopper may not.

In conclusion, Grasshopper is great at handling experimental arrays, facades, and textures. But if you need tectonically stable forms that act as if they were poured from a mold, try Digital Project.