Evenly dividing a lofted surface

Hello all,

I have a very simple lofted surface; 2 curves of different length lofted together. I'm trying to get the surface evenly divided. Not with isotrim, but in such a way that it's in squares of even sizes. I know that that would mean that at some of the edges, there would be a cut square, but that's ok. For the moment, this is just at conceptual design stage. Ultimately, Isotrim is not what I'm looking for.

As a background, we're exploring the idea of a dynamic facade for an upcoming project. The idea is that we would have small, square modules manufactured that would have a flap that would flutter in the wind, and we're just exploring it as a concept for now. The plan is to have perfectly square cells on the surface that I could then do a box morph of these modules into them, but the cells need to be square to begin with!

So far, I've been trying a few approaches. Contouring the surface gives me the right vertical divisions, but that's where I'm stuck. I've tried a few things with horizontal frames to try to figure it out, but with no such luck. This is the extent of where I get to. Anyone have any suggestions of how I might approach this?

Thanks,

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on December 14, 2016 at 9:12am

Hello Neily,

you can try searching this forum for kangaroo plugin, planarization of quad panels on surfaces.

best

alex

Permalink Reply by Neily B on December 16, 2016 at 8:29am

while I'm looking at kangaroo (that actually looks like it could be useful for a bunch of other things), I've a slightly different approach that I think will have the effect I'm looking for. After all, this is still just conceptual!

What I've done is taken those contour lines, and divided them by a fixed distance. I now have a bunch of points on the surface which I plan on using as centerpoints for the panels. The next step is to get a normal to the surface at each of these points. However, when I tried to use evaluate surface at these points, the points that evaluate surface gives me are waaay off the surface. Any suggestions?

edit:

Never mind, i got it! For anyone's reference, I used surfacecp to find uv points on the surface, then plugged that into evaluate surface.

RSS