Packing circles on surfaces

In response to an off-list question, here is another version of the point distribution example, with an addition to display circles oriented to the surface

Attachments:

surfcircs.3dm, 125 KB
surfcircs.ghx, 194 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Thijs van der Lely on November 23, 2011 at 5:31am

He Daniel,

I have a question that I was wondering if you knew the answer to.

In your grasshopper file the circles still have a small overlap.

Is there a way to remove this?

In are project we want to pack a surface with cones, the model will in the end be build so know overlap can occur.

Thank you very much.

Thijs

Attachments:

111123.paviljoen.gh, 16 KB
111123.paviljoen.3dm, 50 KB

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on November 28, 2011 at 3:09pm

Hi Thijs,

You could reduce this overlap by making the springs extremely stiff.

To avoid making it explode you will also have to reduce the timestep.

You could find the approximate solution with the default timestep / spring stiffness, then lower the timestep and crank the stiffness way up to get the accurate version for fabrication.

Provided a solution does actually exist, you should be able to make the overlap well below any tolerance needed for fabrication.

Permalink Reply by Dēmiurgos on October 25, 2012 at 9:39am

Hi Daniel.

I'm having the same problem as Thijs, even with a stiffness of 10,000. Do i go even higher?

Permalink Reply by Daniel Piker on October 29, 2012 at 9:06am

Hi Demiurgos,

It looks like you have more circles than it is possible to fit on your surface with that radius, so increasing the stiffness is not going to help much. I'd suggest reducing either the number or size of the circles. For now this adjustment would have to be done iteratively outside of Kangaroo, either manually or using something like HoopSnake.

For the next version I'll look into adding something that could do this adjustment inside Kangaroo. Also with the new Kangaroo API it should be possible for people to make their own scripts for this kind of thing, making use of the physics engine, but with their own custom iteration rules.

Permalink Reply by Bridget May on April 26, 2013 at 7:59am

Hi Daniel,
I'm trying to do a similar thing with the constrain mesh component so I can create a distorted mesh over one created from the 'deformedDrape' example. However, whatever geometry I put in causes the kangaroo component to error. I tried using a smaller/less complex mesh but I don't think that's the problem...

Attachments: