Keynton natalie 615887 algorithmicsketchbook

ALGORITHMIC SKETCHBOOK

2 Algorithmic Sketchbook

Natalie Keynton 615887

ALGORITHMIC SKETCHBOOK

Natalie Keynton615887

3Algorithmic Sketchbook

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CONTENTS

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Case Study 1

Week 6

Week 7

Case Study 2

Week 8

Final Project - The Sailing Bridge

Grasshopper file



WEEK 1Lofting sea sponges

I used Biarc curves to create different shaped tubes and baked each of them into Rhino after modifying the two original curves slightly to give different shapes. Then in Rhino I manipulated them into a formation which I then placed on a base to finish off the composition.

At first I was unable to create the elements by creating closed curved and offsetting them to loft from the original curve. To solve this I offset all the curves from a base one and then lofted all the offset curves. Then I baked the geometry, copied it and joined them together using the Boolean Curve command.

l wanted to try the pipe component for making surfaces. At first I had trouble creating arcs. But by using another curve that acted as the midpoint for the arc the lines became straight but curved. With this surfacing method I tried capping the pipe in different ways.


VoronoiWhen experimenting with the Voronoi component I started by changing the slider values for number of points in populate geometry and the radius of the cells. Then I created a 3D box and deleted some of the cells once the geometry was baked into Rhino.

MetaballOnce again I changed the number of points in the populate geometry component and also the threshold in the metaball component. Doing this I discovered that a larger threshold number made the circles smaller. This may be useful later in Part B of the journal.

Week 1



OcTreeI took one of my lofted sea sponge arms and attempted to create a mesh geometry from points on the lofted surface. I used the OcTree component to generate the boxes, changed the values, joined the breps and used them to create a mesh.

The two attempts below are when I tried to use the Smooth mesh component. It did not work as well as I had hoped and I obtained the final image by skipping the naked edges.


Delaunay triangulationI found this component particularly interesting and look forward to using it to create topographic representations in my final project.

Week 1



WEEK 2Recreating Nature

Below is my first attempt at re-orientating a geometry to a surface. Here I took the curve I made when exploring geodesic curves and reorientated some geometry to it to mimic a shell. To do this I used the Surface Box and Box Morph which were new to me.

In order to immitate the irregular bark I oriented the rectangular geometry to the surface and also used the scale NU component and attractor points to try and give the geometry some irregularity.

Lofted Geodesic Curves

Divide Surface

Deconstruct Point

Surface Box

Box Morph

Truncated pyramid

To recreate the lizard skin I used the technique shown in the Transform Menu video which uses the Contour Component along with Project.

Lofted Curves

Contour

Divide Curve

Construct plane

Orient

Truncated cone


Mesh GeometryI created a series of boxes in Rhino and referenced them into Grasshopper. From there I created a mesh. Here I found that the Weld Verticies component fixed the issue I had last week when trying to create smooth boxes to approximate the sea sponge. I experimented with the inputs for the Smooth Mesh component.

Geodesic curves

Detailing Planar JointsI found this technique useful and can see how it will be beneficial when it comes to fabricating models, however I am not yet sure how to create circles so that the offset does not cut all the way through to the centre because this makes the notched circle impractical as a joining element. Hopefully this will be covered in later tutorials.

I included several steps of the process but still wonder how the final image on the right can act as a connecting piece when it is not in one piece itself. Is there a way to change this?

Week 2



ContouringThe image on the left deomonstrates contouring using the contour component. The one on the right however shows a method of contouring which uses the Brep Brep Intersect component to use curved surfaces to intersect another geometry. The split surface component was then used in conjunction with the shift list component to select only parts of the contoured surface.

Curve Intersection Menu - creating joint detailsBelow I take the grid shell pattern and follow the steps in the video to create a joint that uses circular disks and pins to hold the strips together.


Week 2

Sphere ProjectI recreated the Sphere Project video but used a rectangular box as my base geometry. I could not restrict the intersecting rectangles to the bounding box of the original.In the second image I tried substituting the 3pt Rectangle for a surface created using 4 points. To make this work I had to ensure the seed value of the jitter created 4 lists.

AA Driftwood SurfacesI created a circular geometry in Rhino and referenced it into Grasshopper. I used the Smooth Mesh component before following the video. I offset a circle to create the contour lines but struggled to make them into surfaces. This was due to being unable to transfer the Mesh to a Brep.

Brep from Rhino

Weld Mesh

Mesh Smooth

Mesh/Mesh Intersect

Offset, Extruded Circle

Surface Split




GridshellsAbove I tried playing with the grid shell video. Initially I ordered my circle geometry the wrong way and then spent a while trying to figure out why it wasnt forming an arc in the direction I wanted. The Explode Tree component helped me figure this out though.


Mapping Voronoi cells onto the Gridshell geometry.

I had very little success when using the Pull Point command. As you can see here it only trans-lated onto a small proportion of the bottom half of the geometry. Im not quite sure why.

I had more success with the Map Surface Component which you can see above. I couldnt however then loft these cells.



Cull PatternBelow I use cull pattern to remove points that form Voronoi cells. This creates different patterns.

Partition ListThis component acts to subdivide bigger lists so that they can be broken up and used in other components.


JitterThis allows you to shuffle the ordering ot items in a list. Several of the list compoenets are used below to alter the pattern on the left hand page.



WEEK 4Attractor points, field charges and image sampling

Attractor PointsI created a basic hexagonal grid and used the distance between one attractor point and the circle centers to create the circle geometry on the surface. At first I did not include the remap component, but once I included this the circles became more distinguishable.To find the source domain you need the bounds component. The domain component allows you input exact values of a desired domain. This was also used in the production of these geometry. In the final one (left) I have projected the pattern onto a curve overhead.


Fractal TectrahedraI followed the Aranda Lasch tutorial video in order to create the geometries below. I learnt several new components along the way such as the cap component which closes meshes and the deconstruct brep component which I can imagine being useful later to drag out the verticies and faces of a geometry.




Evaluating fieldsThe series of four vertical images shows experimentation with point charges in a merged field.


Exporting to illustratorUntil now I have exported Rhino files using the -ViewCaptureToFile command to save to .png and then placed directly into InDesign. This week I tried using Illustrator and the actions function to speed up this process. However this created

odd results and I have chosen to continue exporting files in the old way. While the image to the right is interesting, I think that the simple line work is better for more of the images.

Graphing section profilesIn the images directly below I tried a different pattern of curves imported from Rhino before adding the Spin Force component to the definition and finally using field lines rather than points. Then using the graph mapper component I altered the lines to give them a 3D shape.



RenderingFrom here I used the pipe component to generate a mesh that I imported to Rhino and applied the Flamingo rendering tool.

Image SamplingOn the left I alter the radius of the circles in my image sampling definition. I have also attempted to play with the expressions used to generate the size of the circles. The image below takes the outputs from the first half of the definition and uses an expression with the Tan function to loft between two curves to create th cones. They are however quite close together and to fix this I would attempt altering the grid UV inputs to distance the grid points from each other.


Graph MapperUsing Graph Mapper, I manipulated the basic circle geometry to create different patterns. I also altered the domain and boundary of the Voronoi component to produce some of the these results. I tried different Cull Patterns and only allowed the circles to output odd numbers.



In an attempt to comprehend the complex algorithm I attempted to reverse engineer it myself using the provided definition as a basis. I struggled immensely with this, but found it increased my understanding of the components and how they operated together.

I couldnt get the spacing right

I tried playing with the expressions which alter the distance between the repeated the geometry as well as shifting the points in the hexagonal grid that I moved. I still couldnt get it to work though!

I kept trying to alter the spacing of the hexagonal grids in my own recreated definitions

Then I realised that I had missed the component that flipped the matrix.

Then I tried to make the grids match each other but couldnt figure out why there were multiple lines in some places and not in others

CASE STUDY 1Trying to understand the algorithm


These two next images are me trying to play around with the original definition. I realised that by changing the expression that controlled the original spacing of the pattern I could alter how they were positioned. First of all I managed to separate them into rows. Then into their original blocks of 6 that formed the repeated pattern. It was then that I realised that the form was not random but created by using the interior points of the 6 hexagons to generate the odd shaped hexagons. By leaving the outer hexagonal lines unchanged the pattern was sure to fit together smoothly. After realising this I went back to my new definition and began to play around with altering the internal points only and was then able to successfully create a similar grid to the original! Whoo!



Adding the offset component to the definition without changing the default parameters.

Changing the offset values

Making the offsets smooth - i.e. changing the C value

And after adding all the changes and final components it still doesnt look like the original definition - and I am not sure why...oh well. Now its time to play around with the original.

Once more mine with sharp corners

CASE STUDY 1Begining to manipulate the algorithm



WEEK 6Controlling Data Structures

Relative itemBy using the relative item component different patterns were generated using points on the divided surface of the sphere. This appears to work in a similar way to the path mapper component and generated similar results.Note: when using panels to input O value for relative item remember to unselect multiline data.


Continuing FractalsI enjoyed learning how the seed value to control the jitter component and the Bezier Span component. However I struggled with the scripting component of the video and got lost very easily.



WEEK 7Clusters and Iteration

ClustersFrom this weeks videos I found the tutorial on clusters particularly useful as it allows the easy repetition and then manipulation of a repeated part of a definition.



CASE STUDY 2Rebuilding the definition

Attempt 1I tried several methods when reverse engineering in order to experiment. I detail and outline a few of them below.

Using move away from in order to get some movement in the lines to generate patterns.

Attempt 2Trying to use a grid, and alter the grid points and use these to control the nurbs curves.

Attempt 3I tried experimenting with fields in order to shift lines through points, however I was unsucessful in achieving this.

Attempt 4 - final attemptIn the end I set the control lines as very curved lines to minimize the need to use another component to alter the control points of the curves.


This was the final design that I reverse engineered which combined Attempt 4 with a loft.



WEEK 8Extending the framework: Kangaroo Physics Plugin

Kangaroo PhysicsIt shoudl be noted that Kangaroo cannot be used to accurately predict marterial performance as it operates based on a simplified version of the stresses found in the real world.

Springs from lineImportant to remember that if you are using a Polyline you must explode it into straight linear segments before running simulations. Also, if the Kangaroo component goes red, try resetting the simulation using the toggle component. You must use linear inputs.

Experimenting with changing the rest length value of definition below. Looking also at moving the geometry in the Z direction based on the Unitary Force component.


MeshesI tried recreating a similar mesh as in the demonstration video however found that I could not get it to work as well. I think this is due to the way I created my original mesh (in Rhino) which was not recommended and I later ran into problems when trying to alter the anchor points.



Fabric-Like MeshesI found this worked much better. I can see the potential for using this in other projects. Please note: I have included many illustrations of Grasshopper screen grabs for my own future reference.



DEFINITIONAL DOCUMENTATION

Create Poles Create Floats

Grid

Duplicate point in Z direction

Pipe along curve

Create the same way as the poles, changing radius

and height.

Create Sails

Divide pole line into 2 segments

Extract individual points from divide

Use these points to create surface using four points.

Line

Then use Kangaroo to apply forces to

these meshes.


Create Ropes

Use points extracted to create

sails.

Connect using line.

Pipe along line to give thickness.

Create Ties

Build geometry in Rhino

Final Model



GRASSHOPPER FILE

Creating the poles and floats


Creating the ropes



Generating the meshes

Documents

Keynton natalie 615887 algorithmicsketchbook