Mark Cabrinha wrote a great paper titled ''Gridshell Tectonics: Material Values Digital Parameters" in the Acadia 2008 Proceedings. I studied the article for my thesis project and it gives a great insight into what actually makes a gridshell work and what not. Diffenetly check it out!
Glad to hear my gridshell paper was useful. Happy to share, I have attached it to this reply, if it doesn't work feel free to contact me. If we are really talking about gridshells, it is important to remember that the surface is first a structural shell, with the gridshell being one type of shell structure. Martin Bechtold's new book, "Innovative Surface Structures_Technologies and Applications" is very thorough in this regard. I'd also check out his "On Shells and Blobs" published in the Harvard Design Magazine in Fall 2003/Winter 2004. A beautiful recently completed gridshell is the Savill building by Glen Howells Architects, but important to note the engineer in all of these gridshells: Buro Happold.
A great challenge for the Grasshopper community would be to develop a definition (I presume through VB script) to utilize the "shortpath" command in Rhino which gives the geodesic curve on a surface. My paper makes clear why this is significant. I had to wean myself off Grasshopper as I was enjoying it too much.
Haven't learned programming yet, but found
Public Function RhinoShortPath(ByRef Srf As IOnSurface, ByRef start As IOn2dPoint, ByRef end As IOn2dPoint, tol As double) As OnCurve
in the SDK.
So I believe that it would be possible to get geodesic curves on surfaces.
Sure I will upload it here for today, and then take it down. By the way, the latest Grasshopper release has a new component for Geodesics (shortest path).
Mark,
I have a few questions for you regarding gridshells, appropriate digital tools for gridshells, and material feedback
. I would love for you to see what we're currently working on; it is a band shelter for Milwaukee's Lake Park. Could you please email me so I can bounce a PDF back to you?
Thank You in advance,
Erik Walsh
La Dallman Architects
walsh@ladallman.com