Parametric modeling in Grasshopper

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Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on January 31, 2012 at 8:51am

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/line-attractor

Permalink Reply by Mario L on January 31, 2012 at 8:51am

you've picked a fairly intense form to start learning the software with, but more power to you. My suggestion would be to break this thing down to its general form first (ignore the piping / the subdivisions). from what i can see from the image, this is generally a box form, with definable surfaces. I would start by creating an array of parallel lines along the length of the form.. maybe about 8 with an equal offset. what you can do with this is duplicate the lines then move this new set above the old set to give the form a general depth.

 

grab all of the lines and run a "rebuild" command, what you are doing with this is adding more points to the lines... lines are defined by two points you probably want to add about 6 to each line, this will allow you to have more control over what the line is doing, don’t add to many though because then the line becomes uncontrollable.

 

Now with the original set (the lower one) you can use the "points on" command found under the "Main 2" palette to access the points that define the geometry of the curve. manipulate these points for each curve into the form of the shape that you want... get used to this "points on" tool its extremely useful.

 

lastly grab all the lines in the lower set of line and run the "loft" command what this will do is create surface from the selected lines. then do the same for the top set.

 

just remember that in nurbs modeling al la this... that points define lines and lines define surfaces... and i guess you can also say that surfaces define polysurfaces.

 

good luck

Permalink Reply by Kehinde on January 31, 2012 at 10:06am

Thanks mate, will have a crack at this.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on January 31, 2012 at 10:17am

the file i sent you is exactly how to get the form. then contour and pipe.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on January 31, 2012 at 1:59pm

even easier, start with point grid, use point attractor to pull points upward or downward, interpolate curves, loft.