Puffing of Flat Outlines Like Artcam

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on September 14, 2014 at 2:05pm

A new plug-in for architects called SmartForm looks promising if I can possibly pin entire edges and still do the puffing:

http://www.smart-solutions-network.com/page/introduction-to-smartform

I tried something like this in the past but the interfaces and instructions were too arcane to even play around with.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on September 14, 2014 at 3:29pm

Forum intro to SmartForm is here:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/photo/mesh-relaxation-form-finding-by-...

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on September 14, 2014 at 3:58pm

Hi Nic,

Here's a simple way of doing this:The definition also includes a meshing step with MeshMachine.

You can also use the GasVolume component if you prefer to control the contained volume directly rather than the pressure.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on September 14, 2014 at 4:00pm

Here's the definition:

Attachments:

• inflate_curve.gh, 33 KB

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on September 16, 2014 at 4:44am

Bingo! I just had to add a 100ms timer and reset button to the SimulationReset input. It works with a hole just fine too. The PressureLevel and Stiffness give a lot of control over it too, just as nice as $800+ ArtCAM can do. Below I turned the Stiffness way down to create an extreme ballooning effect. I understand Kangaroo better now too, thanks!

How do I quickly obtain such an even triangular mesh to start with? MeshMachine is giving me too many artifacts. As an alternative I used the Rhino _Mesh command with the detailed settings for minimum and maximum edge length set to the same value, which forced a regular square mesh.

A more involved alternative was also presented on the SmartForm thread above.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on June 17, 2015 at 11:23pm

Another way to cap extrusions well is to re-make them by splitting the source curve in two, to result in two single surfaces that then the normal Rhino BlendSurfaces can operate on, with quite a bit of control over the result:

Many commands can be done via Python scripting in Grasshopper to issue native Rhino commands, here using the minus sign as -BlendSrf to rid the dialog box, but the command is requires manual screen selection too so I can't automate it that way and Grasshopper itself doesn't have surface blend.

Another odd capping method is to split the single surface extrusion with an isocurve, via the isocurve option of Split, then just loft the ends with tangency checked in the dialog:

However, this splits it both at your chosen isocurve and then necessarily also at the natural seam in the original single surface, so you don't have full control over where the halves are sliced at.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on June 18, 2015 at 12:39am

T-Splines naturally gives rounded caps when you cap a T-Splines extrusion of a curve, but though they include a Grasshopper plugin, the needed commands are missing:

This doesn't matter much though since I'm really only using Grasshopper to add function to Rhino that T-Splines already seems to do just fine manually.

However, T-Splines takes a lot of work if the extrusion is a tube with wall thickness.

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on June 18, 2015 at 1:26am

The way Geomagic Freeform handles capping is via Inflate, similar to ArtCAM puffing but with a bit less control:

The artifacts are readily smoothed out:

But it won't do Inflate with a hole in it, or dozens of profiles. That's damn $8500 software for you.

At this rate, given how clunky Freeform is for fast modeling, I'm back to Rhino cap and fillet, or sweeping a formed fillet along one rail, or rail revolve, followed by a flat cap.

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on February 22, 2016 at 1:15am

Added a rollTheBones option (for the brave) and the ultimate challenge (for the very brave).

Attachments:

• inflate_curve_V1.3dm, 119 KB
• inflate_curve_V1.gh, 154 KB

Permalink Reply by Nik Willmore on February 22, 2016 at 7:54am

Removing anchor points is playful.

However, I lately can't get MeshMachine to work at all on multiple 2D meshes that require fixed edge curves to not collapse during remeshing, so your final letters mesh fails:

You left the timer out for Kangaroo so I don't know if you used one for MeshMachine too, but a single run of MeshMachine minus a timer does at least give a starting mesh, with your Iterations input however having no effect:

But not one worth inflating.

I've tried every combination of grafting/flattening/simplifying I can think of for the MeshMachine inputs. All the meshes immediately collapse towards one of the objects and the disappear, more or less, or parts collect in one letter, such as if I graft the geometry input and flatten the anchor curves input:

Do I need some tree structure tricks? It seems like the fixed curves are not associating right with each independent mesh?

Attachments:

• MeshMachine FAIL.gh, 13 KB

Permalink Reply by peter fotiadis on February 22, 2016 at 9:39am

Hmm ... this means that the Lord (as "the Lord") beats MM?

To answer this critical (for the mankind) question ... appears that a V2 is required.

more, soon

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on February 22, 2016 at 10:04am

Hi guys,

Converting the Breps to meshes and joining them into one (disjoint) mesh before input is a way to get around this.

Also, whenever there are feature curves with sharp corners like these letters, it works best if the corners are kept as fixed vertices and the boundary curves are not joined. Otherwise, because the outline is all one curve, vertices can jump across the corners from the segments they belong on, causing the mesh to get twisted and possibly break.

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