Irregular Hexagonal Grid

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Permalink Reply by Alexander Onufriev on April 20, 2017 at 7:10am

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but it doesn't sound like you can achieve what you want with grids, cell division is probably more relevant in this case. It seems that your folding will have issues the more irregularity you wish to introduce. 

Might it be more helpful to think of the cells you're trying to generate and to unwrap them afterwards - so in essence by creating the triangles and extending flaps from them - so the workflow would be populating your required surface with the pyramid cells that you generate the nets from?

-Sash

Permalink Reply by Henk on April 20, 2017 at 8:14am

Thanks for your reply!

To make it more clear, the design is for a wall organiser, and the triangles can be folded to use for storage or something else, and when not needed, they can be folded back. It is going to be one full surface completely filled with panels with for example 10 pyramids.

I was thinking of creating 3 to 6 different types of Hexagons, and populate these 'randomly' over the wallsurface. It is not necessary that the openings of the 'pyramid' are horizontal, it is good that they have an angle to a certain extent ofcourse. It is quite complex, thats one thing i figured out ;)

See attached image: What you are saying is to first create a pattern for the triangular 'boxes' because they have to have a certain size for example, i have to be able to put something in it. I think this is indeed a better approach because the 'pyramid boxes' are more manageable. And also for the fabrication it is nice to only make 4-6 types which can be attached to a wall.

So how would you start? create for example 4 types of triangles with its flaps, is there a smart way to do this so it is not necesary to draw lines between 5 or 6 points and then make triangles out of that? 

And is there a good way, after making the 4 pyramid cells, to populate them onto a flat surface?

Thanks again for your help!

Henk

Attachments:

• IMG_6808.JPG, 1.8 MB

Permalink Reply by Alexander Onufriev on April 20, 2017 at 9:10am

Hmmm no matter how I look at it, it seems to me that there are too many issues with this system.

Honeycomb structures in general are used due to their strength and regularity - even a google search didn't turn up many results for irregular hexagonal grids. I don't think the edges will meet well unless you introduce a number of dummy patterns to the structure. 

You could generate the pyramids and use UnrollSrf in Rhino to get their net, you could move these nets around a surface randomly in GH with the Populate2D Component, but then you would need to fill the space in between your polygons with dummy panels.

The other way could be to use a Voronoi generator to to divide the wall into polygons and then extract all the 6-sided polygons using culls as for example in the image, but I think the issue is that the more irrugularity you introduce into your polygons, the more difficult it will be to get their edges to meet up to form the holders that you have in mind....

I personally would do it in Rhino and just design the divisions based on the nets of the pyramids...

-Sash

Attachments:

• Voronoi 6 Sided.png, 538 KB

Permalink Reply by Henk on April 21, 2017 at 2:41am

Thanks for your reply!

I know it is really complicated, i wish it wasn't ;)

But I think I really want to try to work this out in Grasshopper in a way so i can control the sizes of the boxes and that the pattern changes automatically.

What if I have one or 2 polygons to start with (the nets of a pyramid) which i am able to control, and then try to populate them on a surface?

I started with making a 3-sided pyramid (see image) but I think the result is too much in order/boring, i would like it to be more organic/dynamic. What if I am able to manipulate the grid in a way that different pyramids can be created? Maybe with 2 or 3 types and create a nice 3d-wall.

What do you think about these options?

Attachments:

• IMG_6811.JPG, 2.4 MB