Problem subdividing surface with Diamonds

Hi All, I have a problem with a surface I'm designing (see screenshot attached). Since the surface height changes, the height subdivisions (V coordinate) of the diamonds make the diamonds irregular.

I want the diamonds to be as similar as possible in size.

Any help/ideas would be appreciated! Thanks!!

Attachments:

diamonds problem.JPG, 173 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by James Ramsden on May 8, 2015 at 9:09am

Have you tried SmartForm to relax the diamond shapes? This was my attempt a while back to solve a similar problem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FqLnAg7asA

Permalink Reply by Juan Camps on May 8, 2015 at 12:39pm

Hi James. Thanks! I didn't know about SmartForm. I'm trying but grasshopper crushes with every try.. Is SmartClustering the component you used?

Permalink Reply by James Ramsden on May 9, 2015 at 5:47pm

Hmm... My method uses an option called 'average slack length' that doesn't seem to be in the current version - which I've just opened up. The video was made on a project I did in 2013. (Disclaimer: I'm part of the same team that made SF, though I haven't used the current version.) So I'm not sure I can help you directly with this tool. Have you tried using Kangaroo? You can achieve something similar in Kangaroo. The gist is that you use dynamic relaxation to 'relax' your grid on a surface, but that every bar in your mesh uses the same slack length for every bar in the mesh.

And if you're interested... Attached is the workflow for SmartForm.

The Clustering component does something pretty cool - it looks for similar panels in a mesh to look for opportunities for mass manufacturing panels during fabrication - but that's going to be different from what you're after.

Attachments:

smart-form.png, 51 KB

Permalink Reply by Juan Camps on May 10, 2015 at 6:22pm

Thanks James. Too bad they changed it. Do you know an specific component(s) that I should try to make the diamond subdivision more regular? I don't know kangaroo, but I can try anything that might help me get the design I want.

Permalink Reply by James Ramsden on May 13, 2015 at 5:39am

I haven't used Kangaroo much so I'm probably not the best person to suggest specific components, sorry! If you choose to use this method, it is probably best to download some example Kangaroo files to learn how to use it, and head to the Kangaroo forum to ask any specific questions.

In any case, Kangaroo is an amazing plugin and this would be a great opportunity to learn it. It's eternally on my todo list to learn it myself...

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