Distributing spheres on an elipsoid

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 19, 2012 at 3:22am

Hi Al,

it depends what you mean by 'regularly'. It probably not possible (except in a few special cases) to regularly pack spheres on a curved base surface.

--

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Al Krever on May 19, 2012 at 8:18am

Thanks David:  how about distributing points more-or-less equidistantly on a closed surface?

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on May 19, 2012 at 1:37pm

The Populate components will insert points in an iterative fashion, filling up the largest gaps first (though the algorithm is highly optimized and therefore the results are proximate at best). The attached animation shows [Populate Rectangle] with circles whose radii is half the distance to the nearest neighbour point.

Unfortunately the current release only has Populate components for rectangles and boxes, the next version will be able to populate on any curve, surface, polysurface and mesh.

--
David Rutten
david@mcneel.com
Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Al Krever on May 19, 2012 at 5:37pm

Looking forward to the next release.  Thanks David.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 19, 2012 at 2:41pm

Here's a roughly even distribution of spheres using springs in Kangaroo.

Attachments:

• distribute.gh, 10 KB

Permalink Reply by Al Krever on May 19, 2012 at 5:37pm

Hi Dan: I hadn't considered using Kangaroo.  Neat and very colorful. I'll study your solution.