Watertight Identical Hexagonal Tessalation

Hey all,

I've been using GH for a few months now but I'm not an expert at Scripting or Kangaroo. I mostly use GH + Lunchbox + WB.

Me and a couple of my friends are building a Pavilion where we are going to 3D Print the connectors and use standard wooden sticks for the main structure.

I am stuck because when I'm trying to model it on Rhino using GH + Lunchbox, It gives me hexagonal panels but they are all of varying dimensions.

1) I need to find a way to regularize the panel and keep the dimensions to a standard 1m sided hexagon.

2) Each side needs to be planar, because it's going to be wooden sticks.

The main idea is that each panel needs to be planar, standard and hexagonal. Also it needs to be fairly simple so that it can be built within 2 -3 days.

Within the following constraints, the overall shape can be changed but it still needs to be a free flowing surface. I'm attaching some pictures of what I have so far which is pretty basic.

Any help for this would be much appreciated and credited for the Beijing Design Week.

Thanks

Attachments:

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on August 24, 2015 at 4:19am

This discussion should help you with 3d printing the nodes...

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/shatter-curves-from-both-...

There's a GH model in there that can generate node geometry from line structure inputs.

In terms of trying to make all your panels regular hexagons... this topic comes up frequently on GH whether it be using only equilateral triangles, hexagons, pentagons etc;

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/folded-plane-subdivided-i...

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/triangulation-using-only-...

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/polygon-composition-with-...

In general, if you want a curved facade surface your hexagons cannot all be identical. There was a post on this forum about exactly this. I was convinced you could not have anything other than a flat surface with fixed, equalateral triangles but it turns out (and was shown by Daniel Piker and Kangaroo) that you can indeed have a non-planar surface panelled with equalateral triangles but it tends to be a kinked surface and it wasn't straightforward to control.

To try and reduce the variety of components in building structures like this, people have tried this sort of thing...

http://www.solidsmack.com/fabrication/you-can-now-build-your-own-ge...

...but notice the lack of panels!

Perhaps your best route is use something like what Bradley ended up with in the first link I posted then work on ID tagging each panel and node (and their orientations) so you have a construction procedure to follow.

One other thing to bear in mind... the simple construction above was really awkward to construct. On a larger scale it could be a nightmare! Once you have 2 nodes connected you can't fit the third without loosening the 2 that are already connected and shuffling them together bit by bit. Hard with 4 pieces, a disaster with many more so always think about how you intend to construct the pieces!

RSS