Create a Triangle from a Line

From each of these highlighted lines acting as the initial polygonal segment, I would like to generate an equilateral triangle. I thought this would be fairly simple by rotating each line 60 and then -60 degrees, and then joining the two rotated lines with the original line. The part that is not working the way I thought it would is the join component. When I plug in the three lists into the join component, they do not join the lines in order that they appear in the lists. Frankly, I don't know what is going on, or how to help myself. Is there a way to help the join command join lines in a specific order? Should I just split the list up into individual lines and join them together in an iterative fashion? Is there another way entirely to create an equilateral triangle with each of these lines being one segment of a triangle?

Thanks indeed

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on February 13, 2015 at 12:30pm

Hello Isabelle

this is the ZUI feature. If you zoom you will see the small plus minuses. click the small plus and you have the extra outputs.

cheers

alex

Permalink Reply by Isabelle Angieri on February 13, 2015 at 2:32pm

Hi Alex,

I haven't been able to use the ZUI feature. It seems to have come out in 2011. My grasshopper version is from well after that date, so I'm not sure what the problem is. Without using an extra parameter, the components don't really do much. Is there a workaround for the ZUI? To be honest, I don't really know what the extra parameter nob is doing for me.

I haven't been able to get any of the other definitions to work either, which is likely only the fault of my grasshopper ignorance. I'll keep playing with them until something clicks.

Thanks again,

Permalink Reply by ng5 Alex on February 13, 2015 at 2:54pm

Hello isabelle

if you check my screenshot there some things to observe,

first you need to graft (right click each and select graft) both start and end outputs so that you have a data tree (collection of lists) where each branch (list) has one point, then these get inputted to merge which outputs a new tree where now you have in each list the start and the end points for every line. You need to graft the curve length output, so that the right length will be given to the above pairs of points.

Now after these you have circles 2 for each line, organized in data tree where each pair is at the same branch. So you need to use the ZUI so that you can input each circle of these to intersect. Zooming in to each component should do the trick. If you can not use it you can use a list item with item index 0 (the first circle of each of the lines) to feed the A input of curve intersection and then a list item with index 1(the second circle of each of the lines) to input to the B input.

This creates two points for each pair of circles since the intersect in 2 points. With list item 0 or 1 you get to use one or the other for the final triangles.

The last thing is to make sure to the last merge component to simplify (right click select simplify) so that the paths of both inputs are simplified and the same so that they can merge correctly and finally have each branch with three points to be triangled.

...that was a big post. you need to study lists and data trees, to work easily with grasshopper.

cheers

alex