Parking Solver

Park more. Draw less.

Automatic parking layouts for Rhinoceros 3D + Grasshopper — and yes, this demo is live.

↓ Skip the demo
How it works

From boundary to lot in three moves

01

Link the boundary

One closed polyline and the access points. That is the whole brief.

02

Tune the rules

Bay angles, road widths, perimeter modes, pedestrian lanes, accessible quotas — on the canvas or in the live form window.

03

Solve, simulate, hand over

Solve in seconds, run real traffic through the result, read the numbers, bake to Rhino layers or export the .pks scene.

The plugin — this is the product

A whole parking department, inside Grasshopper

Parking Solver runs in Rhino, on your plot, under your rules. Everything below is the shipping plugin — the 3D demo up top is just its export format being shown off.

Interactive by design

Everything is selectable — edit the lot in place

No hunting through parameter trees. Click the thing itself, in the Rhino viewport, and change it.

  • Pick any region, road, row or stall right on the canvas — the whole hierarchy is clickable, from the full plot down to a single bay.
  • Staged edits: pending changes preview in yellow, the Apply button counts them, and nothing touches the solve until you commit — green means committed, everywhere.
  • Discard stalls by clicking them — that ground stays landscape, permanently, and no other pass backfills it.
  • Pick bike islands interactively, place special spots, override any single road's width, direction or turning radius.
Region pickerRoad picker Row selectionStall discard
A selected stall with its guidance route drawn across the lot
Selection in the viewer, mirroring the plugin's own on-canvas pickers — one interaction language.
Fully configurable, honestly responsive

Every rule is a control — and the solve follows you

Forty-plus exposed settings, scoped exactly where you need them: globally, per region, per road, per row.

  • Bay angles 30/45/60/90 and parallel — with double-row interlock stacking at every oblique angle.
  • Per-region overrides: reference edge, road widths, spot size and angle, partitioning, even a parking on/off toggle per region — the perimeter band included.
  • Live Rhino links: move the plot boundary, an access point or an axial road in Rhino, and the solution re-solves — no re-wiring.
  • A real settings window (WPF), in full parity with the canvas: staged Apply with pending counts, sliders that follow the solver until you touch them, results histograms.
40+ settingsPer-region · per-road · per-row Live geometry links
Top plan view of a fully solved parking lot
One solve: rows, roads, islands, markings, one-way arrows — every element still editable.
Defensible results

Numbers you can stand behind in a review

The solver does not just draw — it measures, guarantees and hands over.

  • Per-stall quality metrics — estimated drive and walk distances to the entrances, shaded as a gradient over the lot.
  • Placement guarantees: every stall keeps a car-width block-free access area, the entrance is never parked on, one-way flows are honoured, angled bays enter nose-in.
  • Optimization-ready: weighted fitness goals plug straight into Opossum or Galapagos.
  • Hand-over built in: one-click Bake to versioned, organized Rhino layers — and a tight .pks export for the web viewer.
Quality heatmapsBake to layers .pks exportRhino 7 & 8
The lot recoloured by per-stall drive distance, green to red
The drive-quality heatmap — lower is better, outliers clamped, honest metres.

Pedestrians too

Entrances, crossing lanes or full sidewalks — people get a network, not leftover asphalt.

Special & bike spots

Accessible and elderly quotas by percentage, bike islands picked by hand — serialized with the document.

Real circulation

Access, axial and perimetral roads with true widths, one-way flows and a published street graph.

Corners done right

Turning-radius fillets on the corners that need them, sharp where they don't — islands keep true arcs.

The viewer — a bonus

One View button in Rhino serves the live solve to the 3D viewer — the same one in this page's demo. Nice to have; the plugin is the product.

Green is committed. Yellow is pending.

One interaction language across the canvas, the settings window and the viewer — state is always legible.

Fresh from the lab

What just got better

The licensed release is a ground-up rebuild of the solver. These are real, shipped changes from its changelog — not a roadmap.

01 Angled bays, done right 30°, 45°, 60°, 90° and parallel stalls are built as true trapezoids — never squashed rectangles — and double-row interlock stacking now works at every oblique angle with exact interlock math.
02 Perimeter rows pack as one chain Near-collinear plot edges no longer restart clearances at every joint, and angled rows probe past both row ends — recovering the stalls older solvers leave on the table at corners.
03 Every stall guaranteed drivable Each stall carries a car-width block-free access area; a candidate that would wall in a neighbour — or be walled in — is refused before it is placed. Concave corners even gain bonus stalls that fit both edges.
04 The entrance always stays clear Access corridors are forbidden ground for placement, so no layout ever parks a car on the site entrance.
05 Nose-in bays that follow the road Road direction is derived from the geometry itself, angled bays lean with the direction of travel for either winding, and one-way / two-way aisle widths are angle-aware.
06 Turning-radius fillets without dents Convex corners round properly on both the inner boundary and the perimeter rows, small radii keep sharp corners instead of carving dents, and the perimetral road renders as a true closed ring.
07 The perimeter band is a region too The ring between the plot edge and the interior is now selectable with its own rows, roads and island settings — and every region takes per-region overrides for reference edge, widths, spot angle and more.
08 Click-to-discard stalls, honestly patched Discard any stall and that ground stays green permanently: no other stall family backfills the slot, and the preview patches both the stall body and its access throat instantly.
09 One-click Bake to Rhino The whole solution bakes into an organized, versioned Rhino layer hierarchy — regions, rows, stalls, roads, markings — in the app's own colours, so repeated bakes never overwrite each other.
10 Portable .pks export + web viewer One tight JSON file carries the settings and the render-ready geometry, with instanced stall prototypes. The demo on this page is that file format, live in three.js.
11 A real settings window A live WPF window mirrors every canvas control, with staged edits, an Apply button that counts pending changes, and width sliders that follow the solver until you touch them.
12 Cleaner circulation arrows Straight road segments carry exactly one arrow at their middle; only genuinely curved roads keep the marching pattern.
Traffic, simulated honestly

Cars that behave like cars

Set an occupancy target from 1 to 100% and watch the lot fill: cars enter at the solve's own access point, keep right only where traffic opposes, never cut across greens, and park square in their bay. Every trip is a pure function of time — so you can scrub the whole simulation backwards.

0.13 mm

Worst stall-placement error replaying an export's own labels — across 313 stalls.

0

Illegal one-way traversals, green-island crossings, or overlapping cars — measured, not promised.

−8× … 8×

Play, fast-forward and run time backwards — +2 s then −2 s lands on byte-identical positions.

The transport bar is live in the demo above — open Panels, press Space, and drag the green fill to set occupancy.

▶ Run it
License

Start free. License when it earns its keep.

Classic · free
$0

The original plugin, free since day one on food4rhino. Convex plots, the full spot system, no license needed.

↓ Download on food4rhino
Annual license
$149.90 / year
✓ The rebuilt solver, the form window and the viewer ✓ All updates while the license is active ✓ Instant license key by email ✓ Priority email support
Buy annual license

Annual via Stripe · Rhino 7 & 8 · Windows

CapabilityFreeLicensed
Solver coreOriginalRebuilt — faster, stabler
Boundary shapesConvexConvex + concave
Bay angles90°90 / 60 / 45 / 30° + parallel, with stacking
InterfaceGH componentsComponents + live form window
Viewer & traffic simulation—Included (.pks export)
Bake to Rhino layers—One click, versioned
Special & bike spotsReset each sessionSerialized with the document
Updates & supportAs-isIncluded while active
Pending — you decide

Vote for the next platform

Parking Solver is Windows-first today. These two are staged on the roadmap — yellow until your votes commit them.

🌐

Web App

Parking Solver in the browser — solve plots without Rhino at all.

141 votes
⌘

macOS version

Native support for Rhino for Mac — same plugin, same license.

89 votes
Learn

Fifteen minutes to your first lot

Quickstart video — coming with the launch

▶ Quickstart video

From a closed polyline to a detailed, simulated lot — step by step.

⇩ Sample scenes

Real .pks exports — open them in the demo above, or take them apart.

▤ Components reference

Every component and input — Solver, Roads, Rows, Pedestrians, Special Spots, Bike Picker, Infos. The licensed docs ship with the plugin.

Classic docs on food4rhino
License FAQ

Short answers

Which Rhino versions are supported?⌄

The licensed plugin supports Rhino 7 and 8 on Windows. The free classic version runs from Rhino 6.27 up.

Does it work on Mac?⌄

Not yet — Windows only for now. Vote for the macOS version above and we will email you when it ships.

Does my license expire?⌄

The license is annual and renews through Stripe. Cancel any time; the plugin keeps working until the paid year ends.

How is the license delivered?⌄

Instantly. After checkout you receive your license key by email, and it is also shown on the confirmation page.

How many seats is one license?⌄

A license is personal — one designer, on their own machines. For studio or team licensing, write to solo@archsolver.com.

I lost my key or changed my email.⌄

Write to solo@archsolver.com from your purchase email and we will reissue the key.

Is there a trial?⌄

The classic version is free forever on food4rhino — that is the trial. License when you need the rebuilt solver, the form window and the viewer.