Basic Shelling

This is a definition which was made up a while ago...back when we were still in google groups. I brought it back when Weaverbird was released. For lack of a better term, this is called 'Basic Shelling.' The definition takes one or more polysurfaces with coincident verticies (or not this needs to be tested) and makes a shell through its edges. The output should be a closed polysurface. Combine this with Giulio Piacentino's Weaverbird to get some smooth meshes from the output. Since its working on polysurfaces it tends to slow down considerably with larger numbers of inputs.
Go here to Download Basic Shelling

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Wiktor Kidziak on February 19, 2011 at 11:24am

Since this generates closed polysurface could you tell me how do you input Brep into weaverbird to smooth it like on your image? I thought you can only input mesh...

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on February 19, 2011 at 12:57pm

I convert the brep into a mesh with the tools in GH.

Permalink Reply by Wiktor Kidziak on February 19, 2011 at 1:04pm

but when I convert brep to mesh with rhino command it subdivides it and generates extra mesh edges which mess up the form. How do you convert brep to mesh so that the mesh is defined only by the edges of initial brep?

Permalink Reply by Luis Fraguada on February 19, 2011 at 1:07pm

What I do often is to exploe the brep into single surfaces. Then with the mesh surface component, I convert the surfaces to single mesh faces. If your surfaces are untrimmed and generally quadrangular, then this works very well. If your surfaces are trimmed, then you will need to test different methods, perhaps with the mesh brep and using the custom options to tweak the number of faces generated. I then join all of this together with a mesh join component, then feed it into wb.

Permalink Reply by Wiktor Kidziak on February 19, 2011 at 1:20pm

thank you for the tip! I will check it out.

Permalink Reply by cbass on July 7, 2011 at 11:39pm

Hi Luis,

I've tried this definition but its was acting very strange for me.

After referencing a cube for the Brep, there is no preview of that reference in Rhino (i.e. the geometry doesn't turn green when the brep in Grasshopper is selected). The information IS flowing through the definition, however. I can still bake the output and the result looks right, but since nothing is previewed in rhino,its a blind process for me. What's really perplexing is that if I add any parameter to the canvas and try referencing it, the same thing happens. There is no preview in Rhino. If I open a concurrent, new document and reference new geometry, previewing in the new file works. Its like this particular definition disables any sort of previewing. I'm running GH 0.8.0010. There are no errors when I open the file. I also tried on a separate computer and had the same result.

The work-around I found was to copy everything on the canvas into a new file and save it. Opening this new file works. I hope this helps someone in the future, and thanks for this great definition!

cbass

Permalink Reply by Adam Thuss on December 5, 2011 at 6:34pm

Thanks for the heads up, was having the same problem but this fixed it. Cheers.

Permalink Reply by Adam Fenton on August 28, 2011 at 4:16am

Hi, I have got the shelling definition to work but am unable to figure out how the wb definition connects and in what sequence. Are you able to help? Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Alfredo Pimentel on October 6, 2012 at 5:34pm

Hi,
I was wondering if the example above showing the basic shelled geometry is intended to show a fully formed box frame. When I tried out the definition I keep getting the 2 outer planes of the frame segments rather than all four.

Is there something I'm missing?
I included a rhino file of the result I'm getting and what I'm trying to get.

Thanks

-Fred

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