Incrementally moving 'Floor Plates'

This is a question regarding a pretty 'standard' use of Grasshopper i suppose. Nothing too fancy it would seem but I have yet to find an optimum solution, so I was wondering if someone had any bright ideas.

I'm currenly trying to figure out how best to arrange floor plates cut from a multi storey building so that I can produce a 2D layout which shows all levels with areas etc. without having to manually move them in Rhino. At the moment I have a set up where I move all floor plates, still stacked, to the side of the model. Then I put this geometry into an 'item list' where i retrieve each floor plate one at a time, then move this a certain distance. Working with a tower with up to 40 floors this is rather labourious and makes for a rather messy grasshopper set up.

Is there a way to take a number of items and say 'move the first item y+50m, the second item y+100m, the third item y+150m' etc.

Any help much appreciated!

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Damien Alomar on June 28, 2009 at 10:42pm

What I tend to find works really well for laying things out, whether it be for fabrication or other drawings, are change basis transformations. All that really means is calculate a transform that will take an object from plane A and make it on plane B. Since I assume that your floor plates are flat, and probably generated by planes in the first place, I would see if you could use them to map back on to your 2D layout.

Attached is a quick example definition. Half of the stuff in there is simply to generate some geometry and planes. The component that is really doing all the work is the Orient component at the end. HTH

-Damien

Attachments:

LayoutViaChangeBasis.ghx, 181 KB

Permalink Reply by Mark Bol on June 29, 2009 at 6:20am

Hi Damien,

Thanks for your quick reply, it's saved me a lot more trial and error. As you said the Orient component is the key.

I'm impressed that it could be done using components and no scripting as such, THE reason that I've started using Grasshopper.

Thanks again,
Mark.

Permalink Reply by Mark Bol on July 2, 2009 at 6:48am

Hi Damien,

I adjusted your solution, basically using 'Orient', to create a set of target planes set on grid of points to allow the tower floor plates to be set out as a rectangular grid, making it easier to print them on an A3 sheet for example. Very practical, i know, not very exciting, but I'm pretty excited about using Grasshopper to make these types of tasks super efficient.

This was working well with the previous version of grasshopper. I've updated to the new one today and have a problem i can't seem to fix.

I have 10 Floor Plates produced from the Section. I have 16 points on the grid. I wish to use Orient to place to first floor at the first point, the second floor at the second point etc. I assume I have to use 'shortest list' , because i don't want the top floor repeated to fill the points available on the grid. When i use shortest list i only get all the floor plates at the first point.

When i use 'longest list' at orient, the floor plate aligned to the grid point does shift but all the floors are carried with it, and of course all 16 points fill.

If you have any suggestions or time to have a quick look at the attached files it would be great.

As i said this was working perfectly with the last version....perhaps I'm missing something really obvious?

Thanks, Mark.

Attachments:

Orient Test.ghx, 218 KB
Orient Test.3dm, 59 KB

Permalink Reply by Lars Renklint on July 2, 2009 at 4:16pm

In this new version it's not whether you use longest or shortest list that will make a difference. It's this new way that GH handles lists. It will take the whole list of floorplanes and move that to either one point or all points. By using "Graft Tree" you can put every floorplane and every point on its own branch and thereby move the first floor to the first point etc.

Permalink Reply by Mark Bol on July 3, 2009 at 2:06am

Great thanks, I was unaware of the new way lists were treated.

One little glitch i still can't seem to solve (and i think your screen shot shows as well) is that the last item gets placed at the last point. Any ideas why? I don't mind moving it manually in Rhino once I've baked.....but it would be nice to have it in the right place!

Thanks again,

Mark.

Permalink Reply by Lars Renklint on July 3, 2009 at 4:00am

Sorry, but I don't know why that is. Just wanted to point out the new behaviour in Grasshopper with Data Trees.

Maybe someone else can explain this.

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