Surface analysis

im looking for a way to analyze a complex curved surface where the result is a field of points where there is a greater density of points at an area where there might by a higher degree of curvature and a lesser density of points where there is a lesser degree in curvature. Any ideas?

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on September 24, 2011 at 9:23pm

Hi Austin,

several ideas:

1) create a uniform point-distribution, then move all points towards higher curvature in their immediate surroundings. Point motion could depends on the steepness of the curvature gradient. Iterate the process if necessary.

2) Create a dense mesh, then reduce it. You'll need to use Rhino commands for this as the Mesh Reduce algorithm isn't exposed in the SDK.

3) Create a dense point distribution, then cull points based both on a random factor and the underlying curvature (i.e. points on flatter areas will be more likely to be removed).

4) Use the mesher to create an adaptive mesh that has few starting polygons but a great deal of refinement due to 'Maximum Distance Edge To Surface'. Then harvest the points from the mesh.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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