Exoskeleton

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!).

Copyright 2014 Daniel Piker and David Stasiuk

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.

  • Thickness gradation

    Hi, I'm pretty much a noob to Grasshopper and for product design project, i made this wireframe generator and I'm having hard time to manage the thickness of the exoskeleton:I want it ti be thick at the center of the geometry and further it gets from this point the thinnest it gets.I guess it's…

    By RIPON anton

    0
  • 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 not work (1 and 2 in the attached .gh file). Attempts 3 and 4 both work, but it looks like ExoW is…

    By Deanne Neilson

    0
  • 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 Exoskeleton2_150904.zip. All of these were plopped into Grasshopper/6/Libraries:…

    By Mike

    0
  • 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 wireframe along XY plane.The ExoW component keeps saying : "Solution exception:Object reference not set to…

    By Xiaojiao Xu

    0
  • exo producing open mesh

    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 the image, the nodes and some of the wires are producing distorted mesh edges?Can anyone help me out…

    By Clayton Nickum

    2
  • Cytoskeleton wont start up properly.

    Hello folks,i've been trying to set up exoskeleton and cytoskeleton, but only exoskeleton seems to be working. When I start GH, it gives me 2 Errors: 1. (Cytoskeleton level 1) Target invocation exception 2. (Cytoskeleton level 2) seems it cant find plankton 3.0.GH Build is 0.9.0076Informations…

    By Nicolai Bauchrowitz

    5
  • Error on trying to install

    Hi, can anyone help me with this:Plankton is v0.4.2 from hereExoskeleton is …

    By Mike

    3
  • dividing nodes

    Hi,i was wondering if anyone knows a script or has an idea of how to divide a node to enable the fabrication of branching structure.anything would be immensely helpful. I've done what i want to achieve in rhino 'manually' but there must be a more efficient way to do so in grasshopper which would…

    By George Brazier

    0
  • Exoskeleton trial - Error

    Hello,I am making some first use of the Exo- Wireframe; I took a look to the Exo-vase exemple definition and tried to apply the same logic to a simple geometry, which is a sort of star derived from a control point edit from a sphere.Since it is the first time I try Exoskeleton, I  checked the lists…

    By Giacomo Forcina

    2
  • Exowireframe failure

    Hi all,Can anyone help? I'm creating some random lines with Voronoi 3D (cleaned up with Topologizer), and am getting "object reference not set to instance of object" with exowireframe. I've got 302 lines. When I use a subset component to pick out the first 40 lines, exowireframe works fine. The…

    By David Bachman

    2