minimal surfaces from curve network??

Hi Jon,

I'm working on a tensile net installation that will hang down from a set of handrails in a public space at my university; I'm using kangaroo for the physics of it and geogym for the curve networks and surface generators. I was wondering if there is a possible way to make these surfaces (see image below) minimal surfaces (as if each triangle were being stretched from each corner).

So far I've been able to adapt Daniel Piker's wooly path script as a post-process to simulate the minimization of the surfaces. It works just fine, but I'd like to make the process a bit less painful by not having to set up different timers (one for kangaroo and one for wooly paths) and more integrated (minimizing the surfaces as they are generated from the tensioned net with the sdrCNF component). Please refer to this link (and the image below it) to see what I intend to do with the minimal surfaces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cH10w...

Any help will be greatly appreciated, let me know if you need the gh files!

thanks

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by shehzad irani on November 3, 2012 at 12:43am

yea, it is, but then once you have the forces, you can simply put it into GH and work with the system, rather than work on two systems at one go. Also the plugin gives more control on the formfinding process for the membrane.

Just one more suggestion - your membrane doesn't look doubly curved, hence i question the reason why you are doing a "form-find" in the first place. Also, if it is not doubly curved, you might face problems if its an external membrane structure. If its indoors too, the fabric will tend to sag eventually.

Permalink Reply by RENE on November 3, 2012 at 1:19am

You're completely correct Shehzad, and that is why I posted this question in the first place. While the tensioning component is 'accurate' through kangaroo, the surfaces are not being driven by physics, but rather they're affected by attraction between curves in the network as a secondary process, approximating the appearance of an actual minimal surface (but not accurately nor doubly-curved). I've just downloaded rhino membrane and will give it a try as well; thanks again, I really appreciate the critical thought!

Permalink Reply by Eugene popov on January 7, 2013 at 3:00am

Hi Rene

You can model any minimal surface with the K3-Tent system very easy. One can spend less

than 5 minutes to design any surface like shown below for instance. The system use the

Stretched grid method for minimum surfaces form finding (see Wiki)

Permalink Reply by Eugene popov on February 18, 2013 at 7:14am

The new version of K3-Tent system has been laid-open on the page http://tent.k3-cottage.com/ so previous installation should be substituted for the newer one.