Geodesic dome

Hi all,

ok i don't know if my brain has gone into complete lockdown state or whats wrong with my, but i haven't got the faintest idea of how to create a geodesic dome in rhino and bring it into grasshopper or create it from scratch in grasshopper.

I need a sphere with points divided equally over its surface. Until now i've used a parametrization of the sphere but it just dawned on me that the points aren't equally distributed on the surface..

I'm leaning towards creating it in 3dsmax and exporting the vertices of it, and importing them in Grasshopper, but then i have no way of adjusting the number of points on the surface.

What to do? :)

Kind regards

Thomas

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on December 8, 2009 at 10:10am

Not sure if I'm adding much to this discussion as it seems that those with questions have come up with solutions. I missed this thread earlier this year, with regards to adding geodesic domes to Rhino, it's a command available in my Structural Drawing plug-in, refer : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfrljz-l8b0

As for the geodesics on a free form surface, that loks pretty impressive. I also did a blog post on mesh relaxation for a grid such as the British Museum Great Court Roof. I'm starting out working full time on these tools now, so hope to soon add a dynamic relaxation routine to the force density routines I show in this tutorial http://geometrygym.blogspot.com/2009/11/british-museum-great-court-... If the connectivity is correct with dynamic relaxation that should give you "geodesics" I believe.

Have you seen the Weald and Downland gridshell by BuroHappolds? I was lucky for a visit with work earlier this year. Google it for images.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Mårten Nettelbladt on December 10, 2009 at 3:11pm

Hi Arthur, very nice work!
Please try some of these links for examples:
http://ibois.epfl.ch/page12022.html
http://cumincad.scix.net/data/works/att/f197.content.pdf
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=downland+gridshell&m=...
http://www.shigerubanarchitects.com/SBA_WORKS/SBA_PAPER/SBA_PAPER_1...
http://www.arcspace.com/architects/ville_hara/tower/

Permalink Reply by punkhead on March 7, 2010 at 10:21pm

Hi Arthur,

Would you mind sharing this definition ?

Thanks a lot

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on March 8, 2010 at 12:31am

Hi Punkhead,

If it's of interest to you (or others), I can integrate my plug-in command into a single c# grasshopper component if you're happy to install my plug-in. Will give you options for all sors of Geodesic domes as shown in this you-tube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfrljz-l8b0

I'll add it later today and post when the update is uploaded.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on March 8, 2010 at 7:44am

Hi Punkhead,

Reading back through the thread, it looks like you were after a geodesic grid on a freeform structure, rather than a geodesic dome. Anyway, I added the geodesic dome function Grasshopper-StructDrawRhino as an example file to my blog, http://geometrygym.blogspot.com What you're after can be done using my plug-ins, there's an example of doing so for the British Museum Great Court Roof, but I haven't added that to a Grasshopper component (yet). The iterations means it's a bit slow to computer for realtime interaction, but it can be done if you think it's necessary.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on June 18, 2010 at 1:50pm

Hi Jon,
Would it be possible with your tool to do triangular divisions?
we had problems opening the file, do we need a license?
thanks

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on June 19, 2010 at 12:04am

Hi Arthur,

If you toggle off the bucky ball Boolean input, it will produce Triangular divisions (by the way, Daniel Piker was explaining to me that for high frequencies the output is not true technical bucky balls).
The Geodesic dome and profile sweeping are both behind the plug-in license, email me about that.

Cheers,

Jon

Permalink Reply by Arthur Mamou-Mani on June 21, 2010 at 3:07pm

Thanks Jon,

I am not sure what are the steps in order to draw a geodesic dome using your tool.

Do I have to buy a license to install the plugin and then use the geodesic dome tool or can i install a free reduced version which has the geodesic tool already in it ?

Is the geodesic triangular division going to output a list of 3 vertices and/or 3 edges which i can use to place a panel for example?

Thanks again Jon!

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on June 21, 2010 at 11:48pm

I'll email you about the license options. There isn't a free reduced version of the plug-in as such, although I have had requests for specific subsets of various tools. But I think the price of the plug-in is reasonable enough that if it saves you a couple of hours work, it should have more than paid for itself (and you might spend more than that trying to search for a free alternative if it exists, or writing the equivalent yourself). The geodesic dome component can output planar panel faces as a polygon, or you can use the other cell filleting commands if you wish to offset the edge a distance, fillet the corners with a radius or generate an extruded panel. If you've other ideas/suggestions, I'm happy to try and add them.

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on June 22, 2010 at 12:08am

I was a bit late to include two example images, here they are

Permalink Reply by Giuliana on February 2, 2011 at 3:59am

Hi sorry Jon...i'm a little bit late (almost one year :) ) but i download your geodesyc gym it could be very usefull for me..but i still can't use it..it's for the licence isn't it? what can i do?

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on February 2, 2011 at 5:37am

Hi Giuliana,

The tools are free for students for academic use, or I offer an evaluation period to commercial users to evaluate them.

Installation instructions are here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/geometrygym/forum/topics/install...

Look forward to hearing from you.