spheres loft?

hello,

i have made several spheres (different radius, different centres) in grasshopper and i want to make a surface that is like a membrane that contains all the spheres tangentially.

i have tried many things but nothing seemed to work any ideas? thx

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on December 20, 2011 at 2:09pm

Are you looking for a Connolly Surface? If so, you're pretty much out of luck. It's insanely difficult, the only place I've ever seen a halfway successful implementation was in RasMol and similar molecular visualization packages. Perhaps the new Symvol plugin from Uformia can do it as well, but it's very early beta stage for those guys.

If you have to do this in Grasshopper, a physical approach would be my start-point though. Maybe try and vacuum suck a mesh with Kangaroo using the spheres as obstacles?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by tz br on December 21, 2011 at 7:41am

david thank you thats what i am looking for. :( if anyone has any other easier way please let me know thx

Permalink Reply by Manuel on December 21, 2011 at 7:43am

maybe you can simulate it with metaballs...

Permalink Reply by Turlif on December 21, 2011 at 3:12pm

In fact David is right our plugin to Rhino - Symvol does this as a basic feature. Use the command VBU (blending union) after you make Spheres using Symvol (it can done with any shape not only spheres). You change the configuration or size of the spheres at anytime with out remolding and can export back to into native Rhino mesh at anytime (be careful about the resolution you use to create the mesh or it will take forever to generate). You can get our free version (still in beta) at http://uformia.com/index.php/download There are several other ways to do this as well in Symvol - ask me if try it and have any issues.

Permalink Reply by tz br on December 26, 2011 at 12:04pm

thank you turlif. i am playing with symvol right now, can i transform what i have done in the rhino geometry into the symvol geometry or do I have to build it again with symvol?

Permalink Reply by Turlif on December 26, 2011 at 4:05pm

We will import poly geometry in the future, however this would not be the best solution for your case. In this case, unfortunately, it is best to remodel the geometry - how many spheres are you using? Also, it may be interesting for you to try vGrow and vCanal (the last requires a pline as input).

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