Exoskeleton

Information

Exoskeleton is a free plug-in for creating meshes. It is currently comprised of two components: Exo Wireframe and Cytoskeleton.

Exo Wireframe thickens line/node into watertight meshes. It solves the nodes using a convex hull and stitches the hulls together with polygonal struts.
Cytoskeleton thickens the edge network of any existing mesh into a thickened mesh. The topology of the base mesh enables the production of a clean quad meshes whose vertices are all of even valence. Because It uses the half-edge mesh library developed by Daniel Piker and Will Pearson, it also requires the installation of the Plankton dll's and gha.

Exoskeleton remains a work in progress, and as bugs are fixed and new components and features introduced, updates will be placed here. Furthermore, Exoskeleton is an open-source library.

Download the most recent version here: Exoskeleton2_150904.zip

This has been updated to also include Plankton version 0.3.4

This library is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

(The source is available on GitHub here)

Please use this discussion forum to post questions, describe issues, and provide feedback (and examples!).

Thanks to Will Pearson, for his work on Plankton and who also has given some invaluable contributions to Exoskeleton in terms of project organisation. Thanks also to Giulio Piacentino for Weaverbird, and for general knowledge and support, and Mateusz Zwierzycki for the same, as well as for sharing his code for convex hulls, which although not used explicitly here, was very helpful in many regards for the development of Exoskeleton.

Members: 396
Latest Activity: May 21

Discussion Forum

Exoskeleton meshes not joining??

Hi,I have just started using Grasshopper for university so please excuse my ignorance.I am trying to use Exoskeleton to thicken lines to use in an architectural rendering. My first few attempts did…Continue

Started by Deanne Neilson Sep 10, 2018.

Can't get Cytoskeleton to load.

Rhino 6.I have Plankton v0.4.2 from https://github.com/meshmash/Plankton/releases (I also tried Plankton v0.3.0). Using…Continue

Started by Mike May 15, 2018.

Problem Using ExoW

Hey Guys,I am having a problem when joining two wireframes into one Exoskeleton Mesh. As you can see in the Pic#1 I was able to thicken the wireframe while having a problem after mirroring the…Continue

Started by Xiaojiao Xu Apr 16, 2018.

exo producing open mesh 2 Replies

Hey guys,I'm trying to create a mesh for 3d printing, but my exoskeleton/cytoskeleton and plankton components are producing this open mesh instead of the air tight closed mesh. As you can see from…Continue

Started by Clayton Nickum. Last reply by Clayton Nickum Feb 5, 2018.

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Comment Wall

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Comment by Alessio Erioli on September 12, 2018 at 7:30am: Guys, this plugin is from 4 years ago (and it is stated that it's a work in progress); unless David and/or Daniel decide it's time for an update it might have all sort of issues in untested environments (Rhino 6 and everything that came after the plugin itself was written).
When I tested it, it had some issues with a large number of lines and if parameters weren't carefully tuned it failed to produce consistent meshes.
If some of you has time and skills on their hands, there is the source code available on GitHub (link is in the description). For personal use, time ago I updated a definition by David Stasiuk to make nodes and beams, based on 3D Convex Hull component. You can still find it here:

https://www.grasshopper3d.com/xn/detail/2985220:Comment:1745216

Warning: in Rhino 6 the Starling Convex Hull component doesn't seem to work well, you can use the 3D Convex Hull from the MeshEdit plugin instead (https://www.food4rhino.com/app/meshedit - just substitute the 3D Convex Hull component in the definition and it should work fine).

Comment by Carlo Beltracchi on September 11, 2018 at 10:41am: Seems that ExoW component does not work as expected in Rhino 6 environment, while it works well in Rhino 5.

Is there a way to fix it?

Are there alternatives to this plugin?

Thank you in advance.

Comment by bea franko on August 28, 2018 at 7:11am: hey guys!

i want to exoskeleton a simple bunch of lines, but just get errors.

i played around with the settings, but there is no logic for me.

please help me!

thank you!!!node.gh

Comment by Andrei Raducanu on May 14, 2018 at 6:38am: exoskeleton seems to work great in some cases in Rhino 6, but in others, it makes these extra limbs towards the world origin.any idea why or how it an be fixed? i also attached the file, please help if you can, thank you!

problema%20exo.gh

Comment by David Stasiuk on January 6, 2017 at 2:29pm: I haven't tested it in GH 1.0 or Rhino WIP...

Comment by Mauro Sogni on January 4, 2017 at 7:33am: hey guys do you have problems in GH 1.0 in Rhino WIP?

in GH1.0 Exowireframe fails but in GH0.9 RH5 it is ok.

do you have the same issue?

Comment by Kelvin Karel on October 16, 2016 at 1:15am: Hey guys,

Is there a way to vary the sizes of the nodes?

What i meant is the bottom stick is bigger while the 2 sticks that splits are smaller.

Regards,

Kelvin Karel

Comment by David Stasiuk on April 18, 2016 at 9:29am: It's hard to know what's going on without seeing your file. I do know that the convex hull script isn't 100% bulletproof, and so will very occasionally bug out...

Comment by Doguscan Aladag on April 15, 2016 at 9:07am: Hey, first of all thank you so much for this very useful tool. I have a problem about the resulting mesh. Although I use topologizer and the curve network is totally clean, I still get this bad mesh as a result, no matter how simple the curve network is. Playing with the parameters didn't work so far (tolerence of the topologizer, pipe radius etc,.) Any ideas what might be causing this?

Thank you very much in advance.

Regards.