variable surface offset

Hi,

I have managed to create a variable surface offset (at least a reasonable attempt) that may be off interest. I am pretty new to grasshopper so the definition may be a bit long winded though.

I am having some trouble trying to divide the offset surface. My intention is to apply a component framework for use in t-splines with the scale now adjustable in 3-dimensions responding to the same variable points (where the graphmapper determines scales of subdivided surfaces and the height component is proportional to the area).

The problem comes about when the offset surface is used as input data for a graphmapper with it only showing values of 0.0 or 1.0. If I bypass the graphmapper as a division distribution tool and set fixed u, v variables it works fine. Likewise if i bake the offset surface then use this as the start point for the surface division it also works, but not when used as one continuous definition.

I have attached the definition and am really hoping someone can help.

Thanks

Attachments:

varaible offset by surface distribution.ghx, 632 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by taz on March 24, 2010 at 10:11am

Hey Leon,

I'm checking out your file. I'll see if I can suggest anything.

One quick thing I spotted, which may not make a difference but seems strange, is using [Multiplication] from the Complex tab. Switch to the one from the Scalar tab to be safe.

Also, instead of a square root graph you can use the expression "sqrt(x)".

See also this discussion:

Variable Offset

Permalink Reply by taz on March 24, 2010 at 7:22pm

Well that was fun in a tedious kind of way. This might be more complicated than you were looking for, but using vectors it takes the weighted average of what would be the corners of your original surface patches.

I used a Kangaroo component to delete duplicate points.

Attachments:

varaibleoffsetbysurfacedistribution_mod2.ghx, 676 KB

Permalink Reply by leon on March 25, 2010 at 4:10am

Thanks Taz,

I'll have a look at it when I next get some free time. This seems to solve the problem I was having with only taking a single vertices points from each subsurface to construct the offset - therefore missing out the end row in the u and v axis of the grid.

What happened before was that when I then tried to apply another part of the definition to the offset surface it didn't read it as a surface so I had to bake it then begin the definition from there. Fingers ccrossed this solves it.

I'll keep you posted

Permalink Reply by taz on March 26, 2010 at 4:29pm

Leon,

The way I got it work was to not subdivide original the surface. There is a (hidden) reference surface I used to extract the UV coordinates an map the custom point grid back to the original surface.

Basically it's the same as using [Divide Surface] with a custom spacing (instead of an integer number of UV curves).

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