Weaverbird 0.7.50

Hi All

this is to let you know that the new Weaverbird release 0.7.50 Spring GH is now ready to download.
It fixes the incompatibility with GH 0.9.50+ and delivers 4 bug fixes and a wish:

- it was not possible to use some of some tessellation strategies in wbTessellate in Rhino. This is fixed
- mesh from lines handles some more difficult cases, with lines not exactly touching
- wbBevelVertices could pre-tessellate inconsistently when input was made of polylines. this is fixed
- wb properties was fixed. it now computes volumes

- an option was added to Offset components to try to compute offsets based on planes intersections rather than normals

As usual, look out for any new bugs and please keep on letting me know any questions or wishes you might have.

Giulio

Giulio Piacentino
Weaverbird development

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by djordje on May 8, 2013 at 4:31pm

It would be nice if Mesh relaxation component would be included in Weaverbird.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 8, 2013 at 4:45pm

Just to let you know - Alongside all the mesh relaxation functions already possible with Kangaroo, the new release will include easy (single component, no timer) mesh relaxation using either dynamic relaxation or force-density method. Also options to set different warp/weft stresses...

Permalink Reply by djordje on May 8, 2013 at 4:52pm

Thank you for the reply Daniel.
Although I am not familiar with the methods you mention, it is wonderful to hear that some simple component will be available. Great news!

Possibly just with an option to adjust the number of iterations.

Permalink Reply by Giulio Piacentino on May 9, 2013 at 3:36am

Hi Djordje

thanks for sending in this good suggestion. Weaverbird, which is the first addon for Grasshopper in order of time, was also the first addon embedding Laplacian Smoothing in Grasshopper. LS, as written in Wb, is definitely a form of relaxation.

David Rutten wrote a cool mesh relaxation script in RhinoScript, back in the reconstructivism.org days. Back in 2009, then, there was a sudden surge of development around this subject. Jon Mirtschin had showed a cool Rhino plug-in in 2009. I recall also talking with Moritz Fleischmann about elastic strips. Daniel Piker, who answered just above here, started Kangaroo as a script. And, of course, there was then Robert Cervellione's Minimal Surface generator. By itself, relaxing a mesh is not so difficult. It's making the simulation of material work correctly, which is hard. I think Karamba tries to go in that direction.

Given that all these smart people are working on this subject, I might add some components only if I feel the pressure of the fun hitting me, but otherwise it's definitely already very popular.

I remember teaching Daniel how to program Grasshopper components in my .Net Grasshopper class. It's nice to see he has made advancements since then. I'd hope he makes Kangaroo into something a bit more precise and intuitive. On Weaverbird, I think it will need further precision, too. Improving offsets, fillets both might help. But its field and strength is topology, not integral particle movement per se.

I'll keep your suggestion in mind,

Thanks

Giulio

Giulio Piacentino
Weaverbird development

Permalink Reply by djordje on May 9, 2013 at 3:46am

Wonderful reply.
Grazie Giulio.

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on May 9, 2013 at 12:04pm

Well - it seems this has turned into a discussion about precedent. Perhaps the general forum is better for this, but since it is here now I'll add my 2 cents...

Certainly implementations of surface relaxation have been around much longer than any of the tools you mention, or indeed Rhino itself. A particularly well known one is Ken Brakke's Surface Evolver from over 20 years ago. Of the examples listed, some of them were inspirations when starting Kangaroo in 2009, and I've always tried to acknowledge those. (of course, surface relaxation is only one part of what Kangaroo is about)

I also was helped by conversations with many people, including Moritz as you mention, and especially yourself with the coding. Indeed the .Net class you ran back then for McNeel, as well as the other correspondence in your own time was really useful in getting started - thanks again!

As for mesh relaxation not being 'not so difficult', well - for sure there are many implementations of these things out there. Similarly there are dozens of examples of subdivision implementations (Andrew Heumann even showed you don't need to code anything, but can do it with standard grasshopper components), but let's not start being too dismissive of each other's work, hey ? Of course there's a lot more to making a flexible and useful tool than individual algorithms - making them part of a larger framework or system of tools makes a big difference.

Being the first to implement a particular existing algorithm on a particular platform maybe isn't as big a deal as inventing a new algorithm or technique. When other implementations of the same technique come along, we should just assess them on their merits. If the new tool owes something to previous contributions, then that needs to be acknowledged, and then if it improves in some way on what is already available then great. Even if it doesn't then it may still be useful as an exercise for the author or as an example of a different approach - though of course too much duplication of effort tackling already solved problems is a waste, and if there is no significant new contribution then it doesn't deserve to replace what is there.

If a new tool comes along that improves in some way on what we've done already (such as some of the topology tools available in Starling compared to what is in WeaverBird, or the material properties in Karamba compared to Kangaroo), then let's just learn from that and let it spur us on to greater things and improve even further!

So I'll look forward to using this and future versions of WeaverBird in conjunction with Kangaroo, as I think their feature sets complement each other very nicely.

Permalink Reply by Giulio Piacentino on May 9, 2013 at 1:18pm

Thanks Daniel, yes, go team! This is surely true -- except the Weaverbird spelling :)

For the rest, I can pretty much agree with all of this. The basic implementation of Catmull-Clark closed 2-manifolds is quite easy under my definition, for example. It's making it simple to use for designers, fast, handling all cases properly, making it precise, which is difficult I believe. I've seen another definition-implementation somewhere but I cannot seem to find it (I strongly think that Grasshopper is a language, but this would make this post too long!).

Starling introduced 2-manifold spheres unwrapping, I believe, which is a cool, desperately needed tool.

About the class, I did not run it for McNeel: I decided that McNeel needed to teach it and I've taught it. I've made sure that it ran as it did, with the consequences that it had, because I believe it's great to share and develop.

Go community!

Giulio

Giulio Piacentino
Weaverbird development

Permalink Reply by Dedackelzucht on May 10, 2013 at 1:38am

oh yeah, I remember this good old days with reconstructivism.org...it is still my all time favorite script :-)... Does David know what has been done around the globe with this script? :-))

Thank you David!

Permalink Reply by Wieland Schmidt on May 9, 2013 at 4:38am