How do you boolean multiple surfaces?

I created a surface pattern using multiple attractors. Using the circles generated from the multiple attractors, I am trying to cut them from the larger surface to create a perforated surface.

In the attached picture, the green circles are supposed to be cut out of the red surface to get one rectangular surface with perforations cut out of it.

Thanks in advance.

Attachments:

BooleanSurfaces.jpg, 193 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on November 3, 2011 at 4:52pm

use the circles, no need to make them surfaces, and plug the circles into the split surface component, splitting the main surface. Then use list item and call out the perforated surface. More efficiently you could use sort item. after the split surface components use area to get all the areas, then plug the area list into sort list component and sort the surfaces synchronously with the areas. then plug the result of the sort list into list item with list item as 0.

Permalink Reply by Alex Nizzardo on November 4, 2011 at 2:50pm

Thank you for the response, but this is as far as I got. I'm very new to using grasshopper, and I do not full understanding the "logic" of rhino yet, as far as lists and things like that go. If you could clarify with a picture, that would help a lot.

Thanks again.

Attachments:

SplitSrf.jpg, 135 KB

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on November 4, 2011 at 3:22pm

flatten the C input of split surface. right click on it and select flatten.

Permalink Reply by Alex Nizzardo on November 4, 2011 at 3:36pm

You sir, are a gentle man and a scholar. Thank you.

For future reference, what does flatten do?

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on November 4, 2011 at 3:51pm

essentially it makes one list, What was happening before you flattened was grasshopper was telling it to use x amount of circles you have and cut the surface each time individually, each time outputting the same surface, resulting in an output from split surface that equaled the entire surface that many times. Flatten tells GH to use all the circles as one thing and cut through the surface once, outputting as expected a surface with holes.

Permalink Reply by Alex Nizzardo on November 4, 2011 at 4:43pm

Do you have any experience manipulating lists of points? Kind of like a cull pattern?

The next issue I need to solve is getting the circles to appear where I want them on the grid. The data comes in sets of rows. I know how to eliminate a point from each row, for example, I don't want a circle on points 0 or 11 of each row. What I need to eliminate and the FIRST and LAST rows of data. Do you know of anyway to do this?

Attachments:

CullQuestion.jpg, 152 KB

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on November 4, 2011 at 5:09pm

I actually made a component for that here. http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/cull-border-cluster. but the way to do it without the component would be after your first cull then use a flip matrix component then cull again.

Permalink Reply by Alex Nizzardo on November 4, 2011 at 5:33pm

I couldn't get the component you made to load into rhino, but the flip matrix/cull process worked beautifully. Thanks again.

How can I enter the pattern into the cull with something like a slider? In my particular example the consistency of the grid is likely to change from surface to surface. Is there a way to make the cull always say that the first and last number are always "false"?

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on November 4, 2011 at 5:37pm

0 is always first, use list length minus 1 to always be last. this is what my component does, u need the newest GH to use it.

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