Fixed dimension boxes repeated along surface or curve

I'm fairly new to grasshopper. I sure the answer to this is pretty simple and I feel stupid asking this as I really can't get started, please help me connect the dots..

I need to make boxes (10x10x3) follow a surface or a curve.. I drew an example in rhino, but I really need grasshopper to help me on the intense repetitions.

If the boxes later can be replaced with a more specific geometry fitting inside the box this would be great.. And can this geometry be angled in the four u v directions with a direction away from the center it would be perfect..

It would also be nice to be able to control the max offset of the boxes..

Thank you so much

Attachments:

dummy.jpg, 109 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by LasseLH on December 28, 2010 at 9:14am

So far the solution for the basic part: (should you have the same problem)

Take out a surface or curve component from the parameter tap, connect to the divide and connect this to a box component..

If you have a way of keeping the divided points precisely 10 units away from each other in both u and v, please let me know..

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on December 28, 2010 at 5:08pm

I don't see how points on a curve could be represented in this way. Are you talking about a polyline approximation to a curve that is made up of a series of orthogonal steps?

Chris

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on December 28, 2010 at 8:02pm

Like this?

Chris

Permalink Reply by LasseLH on December 29, 2010 at 5:25am

Thank you Chris.. This is very close to what I am searching for! How is it possible to break each grid point to say 10 steps so the stepping would be less rigid?

Sorry for being unclear about my problem before, i illustrated it better in these uploads..

I need the boxes to make smaller steps but never have gaps or overlap, so not precisely 10 units in u and v but 10 units in u or v depending on position.

Attachments:

ex3.jpg, 204 KB
diagram.jpg, 96 KB
ex2b.jpg, 1.7 MB

Permalink Reply by G on December 29, 2010 at 7:35am

this is the best that i could get it for now. still needs some tweeking. The process consists of two steps.

1. to create a a subdivided surface which can be subdivided into square pieces. A regular bounding box wont work because it will seldom be square shaped. this square bounding surface should always be larger than the open or closed curve

2. dividing the curve into then testing its closest point to the center of the bounding sqaure plane.

3. creating rectangles with the same size as the divisions of the bounding plane.

this works perfectly, but there is one last problem that needs attention.

it generates the same amount of closest points than what is specified for the curve divide. e.g. the curve can be closed for instance with 35 squares , but the curve was divided into let say 50 points. the curve will be closed with the 35 squares but there are an additional 15 squares ontop of the 35 squares.

SO if someone can tell us how to remove duplicate data from a list of points(the points with the same coordinates), then the final solution will have no duplicate data.

the duplicate data can be seen in the second image

Gordon

Attachments:

curvegrid.jpg, 156 KB
curvegrid_planes.jpg, 160 KB

Permalink Reply by G on December 29, 2010 at 7:42am

here is a test on open and closed curve and seems to hold find

Attachments:

openclose.jpg, 227 KB

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on December 29, 2010 at 10:59am

Culling the overlapping boxes gets pretty close to the solution. I couldn't figure out how to do that. Even with culling there would still be small discontinuities where the two patterns meet.

Chris

Attachments:

PtBox_1.png, 173 KB
PtBox_2.png, 168 KB

Permalink Reply by G on December 29, 2010 at 10:38am

ok i have it working beautifully.

I have abandoned the previous way and have found a much more elegant solution. The definition seems to be working perfectly and you can even set the sizes of the boxes and they height of the extrusions. Depending on the scale you are working on, it is possible to any box size, not only 10, so any other amount is possible.

See attached images for the solution

Gordon

Attachments:

Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on December 29, 2010 at 11:01am

Your jpg of the definition is unreadable. Can you post the .ghx file?

Chris

Permalink Reply by G on December 29, 2010 at 11:19am

Here you go.

Attachments:

curve box.3dm, 25 KB
curve box.ghx, 365 KB

Permalink Reply by LasseLH on December 29, 2010 at 5:07pm

Very nice Gordon but do you think it is possible to make the stepping behave more like in Chris' example where the boxes are free to follow the curve more smoothly but without gaps or overlaps?

Lasse

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