How do I use points of make surface and offset inwards?

Hello everyone!

I have a quick question. I have a series of UV points running along a surface. My problem is I can make 4 point surfaces but how do I use the points to make triangular surfaces like in the image below:

Also, I'm trying to offset these points inwards (or perhaps it's a move perpendicular to the surface? I'm not too sure). I was wondering if anyone could give some tips or some help?

This is what I'm doing:

Credits to Danny Boyes for helping me with the grid system

Would be great if someone could give some hints or tips!

My files are attached below.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Attachments:

panelize.3dm, 1.1 MB
panelize.ghx, 1.9 MB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jon Sargent on October 9, 2010 at 1:09pm

Ra,

The first part is easy. The Srf4Pt component makes a triangular surface if you give it only 3 inputs. So set up two Srf4Pt components. Add vertex items 1, 2, and 3 to inputs A, B, and C of the first component. Then add items 3, 0, and 1 to inputs A, B, and C of the second.

-Jon

Permalink Reply by Jon Sargent on October 9, 2010 at 1:22pm

As for the second part, the Surface Divide component already gives you normal vectors, so the easiest thing to to is move the division points along those vectors a specified distance.

-Jon

Attachments:

panelize_edit.ghx, 242 KB

Permalink Reply by Ra on October 9, 2010 at 10:33pm

Thanks a lot, Jon!

I was plugging in the wrong vectors! Though with the moved points, I'm having problems Srf4pt-ing them into triangles. When I try plugging in item, it keeps taking points in rows. How can I get around this problem?

Ra

Permalink Reply by Jon Sargent on October 10, 2010 at 8:31am

Hi Ra,

I didn't realize you wanted to create offset panels. There are two things you could do.

1) Offset your original surface using the "Offset" component, and copy what you did with the original surface to get your offset panels.

or

2) The move component is outputting the points as the SDivide component did... by column and row. Your triangles are simply surfaces whose three points are [(column n, row m), (column n+1, row m), (column n, row m+1)]. (That's half of them, the other being [(column n+1, row m), (column n+1, row m+1), (column n, row m+1)].) If you're clever with list management you can pluck these items directly, but option (1) might be more straightforward.

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