Adaptive recursive subdivision of surfaces based on maximum subsurface-patch areas

by Rodrigo Culagovski

May 1, 2010

This is a very simple definition that subdivides a surface, then subdivides some of the resulting subsurfaces again, based on whether they're larger than a given size, than does it again.
Though there's (alas) no real recursion in GH yet, at least not without scripting, it's not that hard to set up a group in such a way that it's easy to copy/paste/reconnect and do a sort of manual recursion for a few cycles, which is sometimes enough.

This was done as part of a class I'm teaching using GH, at Universidad Católica de Chile. Link.

2nd version that takes into account curvature as well as area: iterator2.zip


  • Andrea Graziano

    Interesting solution Rodrigo!

    May 1, 2010

  • Greg

    I've had luck doing the same sort of manual recursion in Processing: copying & re-naming a function (in this case with a number of geometric primitives translated in their own coordinate system), then calling the copy from the original function. As you said, Rodrigo, even a few generations of this generates fairly complex forms...

    May 3, 2010

  • MillieJordon

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    Oct 15, 2022