Stepwell

Hello Everyone.

I am pretty green in this community and the grasshopper.
Fascinated by Indian stepwell, I am wondering if there is any ways of interpreting it in grasshopper.

I made a paper model, but still I have no idea how to parametrize it. Are there any ways of doing it??

Attachments:

stepwell model2.dwg, 43 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on February 16, 2016 at 3:04pm

Laurent sure has a way to taking this to a whole new level. ... WOW!

Seriously! .... forget about printing the small stuff. I envisage a 4' or 1 M square wall relief, routed out of high density foam, painted the same color as the white wall. Naturally you would not want this to stick out 8' :)

Permalink Reply by Chan Pak Chuen on February 16, 2016 at 9:38pm

This is simply awesome. What a wonderful platform where people like Laurent Delrieu share their thoughts and talents!

I like so much also the nagetive space of the circular stepwell. It reminds me of the babel tower, inversely.

Permalink Reply by Laurent DELRIEU on February 16, 2016 at 2:15pm

I did a quite solid version now ! Just with GH. I like to see it reversed. Like a sand castle.

I must give a try to Sporph, I didn't knew it. Thanks.

Attachments:

round_step_well_v4_almost_solid.gh, 31 KB

Permalink Reply by Laurent DELRIEU on February 17, 2016 at 1:56pm

A version which double stairs when possible. Shift in stairs in order to have less walk.

Attachments:

round_step_well_v5_double_solid.gh, 31 KB

Permalink Reply by Birk Binnard on February 13, 2016 at 8:09am

Laurent - what a spectacular creation you developed. Thank you and congratulations. I haven't had the time to completely understand your methods yet, but will go through it carefully and figure it out.

What I'd like to do is add the GH components necessary to make a 3D print of a stepwell form. My idea is to come up with a reasonably sized and accurate model so that more people can become aware of these structures. They are truly spectacular things to see and experience.

Thanks again for your very impressive work.

Permalink Reply by Laurent DELRIEU on February 13, 2016 at 8:19am

It was fun to do it. If you think I forget some parameters I can help to modify it.

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on February 13, 2016 at 12:57pm

Looks like Origami: .....Yikes!. I'm not sure if one could even get a vinyl cutter to cut such a pattern?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuQsxFhBGzw

sure would be fun!

Permalink Reply by Birk Binnard on February 13, 2016 at 1:35pm

Permalink Reply by Laurent DELRIEU on February 13, 2016 at 2:04pm

Cool

I add 2 cuts at 45°.

Attachments:

step_well.gh, 20 KB

Permalink Reply by Birk Binnard on February 13, 2016 at 6:10pm

I came up with something that works for 3D printing. My additions are crude, but they do work and produce a printable model."Work" means it slices ok and I can create a GCode file to run on my printer.

To make the required STL file I had to run the results of the GH Bake through the 3D Builder program - this fixes any meshing/STL errors that come out of Rhino. So if anyone here tries to use my GH file to make an actual print be sure to run the exported STL file through NetFabb or 3D Builder if you have that.

My slicer says the print will take about 12 hours; I'll see if I can find out why there are errors in the exported STL file during that time.

Attachments:

step_well.gh, 27 KB

Permalink Reply by Kim hauer on February 14, 2016 at 11:47am

I have not done any 3D printing yet. So I'm wondering if you or anyone at this forum has had any success using what Autodesk is offering for Free:

http://www.123dapp.com/apps-for-3d-printing

Permalink Reply by Birk Binnard on February 14, 2016 at 12:36pm

3D printing is a complicated process. To be successful you have to be able to understand and use 3 totally different things: a 3D printer, 3D design software, and slicer software. None of these is simple and/or easy.

I use GH/Rhino (really GH almost exclusively) for design. I find the parametric capabilities of GH simply spectacular. The Autocad apps are all quite good (and free) so I would have no problem recommending any of them. Meshmixer is a common starter for people new to 3D printing; it is targeted at more "free form"/artistic designs that is Tinkercad, which is more oriented for geometric/engineering/architectural designs. Sketchup is also a good place to start with 3D design; it used to be owned by Google but is now owned by a 3rd party company.

For slicers I've tried them all and have settled on Craftware. It's free and available at https://www.craftunique.com/craftware. For backup to that (it is still a beta product) I use Simplify3D (very seldom) but it costs $150.

If anyone cares I have uploaded an updated version of the Stepwell GH file; I tweaked it a bit to make it a little simpler and to make the base thicker so it would be more robust when printed. The dimensions of the part are large so it has to be scaled down to fit a particular printer. This is easily done with any slicer. The STL file from Rhino still has to be fixed; as exported it would print with no bottom - and I haven't figured out why that happens.

Attachments: