attempting planar quads.

Sorry for the delay.

For this update i'll be talking about our attempt at planarizing quad panels developed by my last script. As you can see in my last post, the quads created were no where near planar, and because of that, harder to fabricate. Due to this issue I started to develop a script that adjusted the points based on their neighboring planes. How this code works is that for each point i'm checking is a vertex for 4 other quads. So understanding that I check for each surrounding point, +1 and/or -1 to get all the points for each surrounding quads. After I have those points I create 3 point planes opposite from the point I am checking and project the point to the plane. With the list of points I average them and move my point accordingly. To help visualize this I made a diagram of whats happening.

This process then steps over to the next point until every point is with-in a a certain tolerance I set. In this case I have been using a tolerance of 0.5 inches which helps keep the script run time down to an average of 1.5 second per panel. The planar code does change the overall form, and in some ways flattens everything a little.

Quads before script.

Quads after script is ran

As you can see, the form does change a bit. The next step for this portion will be making sure it does not intersect with any of the above ceiling geometry. more effort will be put back into this after I get a handle on the rest of our development. here are some process images testing it on a larger arrangement of panels.

The script seems to work on different scales. well see what happens next when we make these into solids.

The start, and initial studies.

Originally focusing mostly a Rhino Python for most of my computational work, it has been a little tricky learning how Dynamo deals with geometry. In Rhino there is a clear difference between what is nurb vs what is mesh methods. In Dynamo its slightly different, in some ways it is nice how over encompassing Dynamo Python can be, since some commands for instance surface methods could work for both nurbs and polygon surfaces, Making the change in code between polygonal to nurbs or vice versa possibly simpler and so forth. I will talk more about the differences and similarities between rhino python vs dynamo python I find interesting/helpful in future posts.

Example of how things are connected and ordered.

For this version of dynamo i'm testing out, focused on adding standard geometry into its software. This has been a great help in allowing the user the ability to really test/figure out different variations of geometry and allow mistakes. There are still many issues with how data gets managed through nodes and so forth but the team is working hard to fix the issues as we see it.

Research thus far:

As a study to understand the program better, I looked at repeatable patterns to subdivide surfaces. Fractals geometry quickly became the go to search for precedents in architecture. But for this study I stuck with just a simple L pattern which breaks down the surfaces and rotates, in the end creating a new overall pattern. The next step for this would be to control it more on its patterning, but also in how many times each surface gets subdivided. I'm interested in what patterns emerge from a simple L shape, as you look at the surface you no longer really read the L and you get this QR code atheistic which i'm slowly starting to like, but further will be developed in the new few weeks.

L patterns applied on a dynamic surface.

The project:

So to catch up on some things I have been working on here with Dynamo. The project we were interested in working on deals with a redesign of a drop ceiling. The design will be broken into stages, the first one will be the Optimization of the surface to the ceiling, Stage 2 will be the development of the optimized planar quad panels. Then Stage 3 is the further development of the Fractal patterning. The end goal will be to produce this physically and prototype a smaller mock up. The scale yet to be determined.

Preliminary studies of the drop ceiling design.

I hope your all excited about the project, until next time.
Codes will be posted in the future.