Mesh From Lines

I've been trying to get a good way of creating a mesh from lines for a long time now.

I've just started to try the Starling tools which look promising.

I start with a set of lines / curves and pipe them, then use the the slFastMesh component and finally Weaverbird Smoothing.

Can anyone tell me why the attached definition will not work when all the pipe radii are the same? It almost works when the pipe radii differ by a very small amount.

Any other ideas on how to achieve a mesh from a framework of lines would be great!

Attachments:

MeshFromLines.gh, 4 KB
MeshFromLines.jpg, 165 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on December 30, 2013 at 5:29pm

missed a file

Attachments:

Cabinet2.3dm, 34 KB

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on December 30, 2013 at 5:59pm

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/introducing-exoskeleton...

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on December 30, 2013 at 6:10pm

I was editing my post for too long.

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on January 2, 2014 at 11:16am

That would be awesome if I had Rhino5!

Permalink Reply by Mateusz Zwierzycki on December 30, 2013 at 6:05pm

It will not work because Solid union won't merge the solids properly. To add 2 solids together, one needs to be strictly in the second one, in your example the problematic area are the kinks at which the pipes are meeting. When you randomize a bit the pipe radiuses, Rhino knows which pipe is inside/outside.

If you want to make your life a bit easier, try to find the Exoskeleton component somewhere on the forum (by Daniel Piker and David Stasiuk).

Permalink Reply by Aaron M. Ryan on December 30, 2013 at 6:39pm

Just beware of the (0,0,0) origin problem when using Exoskeleton...here are some tips.

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/exoskeleton-lines-to-origin

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on January 2, 2014 at 11:23am

Thanks for the explanation.

Yeah Exoskeleton looks great but sadly I'm still on Rhino4!

I'm actually trying to end up with something slightly different from the Piping / Meshing created from Exoskeleton. I want to create shapes for corner joints that can be printed easily on cheap 3d printers. So, for example, if I wanted to make a geodesic dome, I would print the corner pieces and connect them all with rods.

The problem with just piping the lines is that when they are printed, very little surface area is in contact with the print bed and most of the part needs to have support material printed which never works very well on the cheap 3d printers.

I'll find some photos to explain what I'm trying to achieve and add them later.

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on January 2, 2014 at 11:33am

I want to achieve something like this but nice and organic and rounded, not square and boxey!

You can see that the base of this shape is flat so would sit flat on the 3d printer bed nicely.

If I just pipe along the driving lines of the corner piece then I end up with something that would sit on 5 points and need support material to hold up almost all of the shape.

Permalink Reply by Aaron M. Ryan on January 2, 2014 at 2:10pm

Well...one way would be to define the joints like the one you modeled above and then apply wbCatmullClark (WeaverBird Catmull Clark) component after it has been constructed in GH at each node...

the definition could take into account the number of lines that converge at each node and their respective angles...would be really cool!

aaron

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on January 2, 2014 at 4:18pm

I can't define the shape above in GH using just the driver lines... I can get some geometry that gets me close, and then finish it off in Rhino, but its still labour intensive and there should really be a way of automating the whole thing!

I have used the WB Catmull Clark on test geometry and it does give some nice organic shapes but I need to get a bit more automation generating the basic shape first!

Permalink Reply by martyn hogg on January 2, 2014 at 4:22pm

There have been some great examples posted on this forum of similar line driven meshes so I know its possible... just a bit beyond me at the moment!

This is brillant...

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/profiles/blogs/mesh-optimization

There was another post about line driven corners for 3d printing that was really nice but it didn't optimise for minimising the support structure.

Permalink Reply by Aaron M. Ryan on January 2, 2014 at 4:32pm

Yes, David's work is brilliant indeed...but your original post wanted to have flat surfaces for laying the print flat on the bed...taking a look at the original paper that inspired Exoskeleton might help you break the problem of the joints down into a reasonable process...just a thought.

http://www.viz.tamu.edu/faculty/ergun/research/topology/papers/brid...

aaron