SketchyGrid » SketchyGrid

Tutorial Update:Perforated Panels

morrow.liam — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:01:46 +0000

This definition was designed to facet any surface, into a grid that can the be divided up into perforated panels. I’ve included the grasshopper file for people to play with, all thats required from rhino’s end is a series of curves to loft and an attractor point.

Perforation Panel Grasshopper File

Note:Version of Grasshopper Needed-(Grasshopper 0.6.0059)

Rhino Trick: Axonometric

morrow.liam — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 20:28:27 +0000

This little macro is really sweet for skewing rhino models into axonometrics. Its important to note however that this will actually skew your model, save your model before you do this.

Just paste the following text into your menu bar:

! _Select _Pause _SetActiveViewport Top _Rotate 0 30 _SetActiveViewport Right _Shear w0 w0,0,1 -45 _SetActiveViewport Top _Zoom _All _Extents

Flocking:Birds and the Like Part 3

morrow.liam — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:49:39 +0000

In my previous articles, my exploration of flocking has remained in the realm of a diagram. This iteration is the first step in taking those conceptual thoughts and brining them to a more architectural level. My previous diagrams generated a logic. The logic consisted of a series of points that responded to one another and a series of vectors attached to those points. The next step I took was in aggregating those collections of points.

The aggregations involved connecting the spheres of flocking’s origin points. After the aggregation each of the flocks was connected to the next via a poly-line. Those lines were the divided to create points, these points were affected by the semi circles, which effectively represent spheres of influence. The points are then turned into floor plates.

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Tutorial:Circle Panels

morrow.liam — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 04:34:07 +0000

This Grasshopper definition uses a grid of points to generate a series of curves that respond to an attractor point. This definition is a great example of using really simple and basic concepts of parametrics to accomplish a more complicated goal. Essentially, all this definition is composed of is an attractor point that adjusts the curvature of a plane and an attractor point that adjusts the radius of circles that are projected onto that surface. The small bit of vbscript at the end is used to split the circles from the surface.

Note:Version of Grasshopper Needed-(Grasshopper 0.6.0019)

VBscript:

a = rhutil.RhinoSplitBrepFace(y, 0, x.ToArray, doc.AbsoluteTolerance)

As a bit of code, its actually not very necessary. Does it really matter if you split the circles in grasshopper or rhino space? In this case, not really, however its useful to know and more importantly it brings up the question of how integrated grasshopper can become with rhino. As a tool, grasshopper can be great a modeling things really quickly and when you start to make relationships its really great at doing calculations for you. These panels are a good example, they illustrate both a much easier way of modeling and an easier way of calculating the relationships between points. Grasshopper presents a much clearer way for the designer to understand what the relationships are within a given project. Given this diagrammatic way of seeing the logic behind an object, designers should begin to spend more time articulating these relationships and less time articulating the form.

The set of images at the top of the article represent an ethereal form of an object. They show a logic, but in order for them to mean anything they need to be put within context. The context would then generate a meaningful form. Whether you design in grasshopper or rhino space is irrelevant as long as there is some context attached to the object. An example with respect to this tutorial could be assigning the attractor points some sort of value, such as amount of light, pre-existing site constraints, or even something as simple as compositional logic.

-Liam Morrow

Tutorial Update:Grasshopper Louvers

morrow.liam — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 06:36:36 +0000

I've just uploaded a new tutorial based around the grasshopper plug-in for rhino, Louver Tutorial.  For those who don't know about grasshopper, visit this link (Grasshopper).  In short, grasshopper is a plug-in for rhino that is used to generate parametric objects.  Its more or less a playground for creating relationships between geometries.  In the tutorial, I explain by example how to decompose a surface in order to map points along it.  These points become the start of a louver system, in which all kinds of relationships could be created to organize their generation.

Note:Version of Grasshopper Needed-(Grasshopper 0.6.0019)