This is the actual reason I'm going through all this. I want to develop an algorithm that can be applied consistently and produce good results.
Here is a a little background. I'm working on my master's thesis in structural analysis. My thesis is on seismic behaviour of a roman temple in Portugal. I will be using a method of analysis suitable for block structures called the discrete element method. I am using a commercial code called 3DEC for this.
Now in order to the analysis I need to construct a 3D block model of my structure. I received a 3D scan of the entire structure (in *.wrl) format and spent a week trying to clean it up and slice it into the blocks that make up the structure. Now I want to use the scanned geometry of the blocks and describe a simplified prism around each that will represent the block in my analysis. I've attached a file with one of the columns in the temple. I think (at least with my tests so far) that it is representative of the all the blocks I'm dealing with.
Now my criteria for creation of the blocks:
I would like the contact area between the blocks to be as close as possible to the actual drum contact area,
I would like to get the volume of the blocks to be as close as possible (secondary to the contact area) to the volume of the actual drums in order to insure that the weight distribution in the structure is as close to reality as possible,
I would like the shape of the contact area to be as close to reality as possible
I order to satisfy all these requirements, I've done the following in my grasshopper file:
I take a section at the top and bottom of each of the drum meshes. I use this to extract the contact outline at the top and bottom of the drum. This is sometimes problematic and requires me to clean up the model and remove features that interfere.
Next I take each surface and try to fit a minimum circle around it. I try to do this because in my mind this is the best possible way to find the actual centre of the drum when there is cut outs and deterioration. This works well as long as more than half of the contact surface is still in its circular shape (third block from bottom in the example file doesn't satisfy this requirement and thus causes problems).
Knowing the centre, I use an algorithm I created in VB to search for one of the flutes on the contact profile. My ideas is that if I can find one of the flutes, I can then find the others by just going around at 30 degrees (there are 12 flutes) and find the location of all the flutes. In the VB code I've tried to explain my algorithm so I won't explain it here. I also think this algorithm is needlessly complicated and stupid as I'll explain later.
Once I've got one of the flutes, I just find the intersection of a line with at every 30 degrees with the outline curve.
Having all (12) points around the perimeter, I use an loop to scale the shape around the centre of the circle I found in step 1 to get the area within a tolerance value of the actual contact area (satisfying requirement 1). I was using HoopSnake before, but it required resetting every time so I decided to write my own thing.
I then connect the points on both top and bottom to get a solid block.
Now the problems are as follows:
Sometimes the algorithm doesn't find the best location as the starting point. As I said an important thing is that the circle is tangent to the flutes and that is true only if the column profile is larger than a half-circle.
The software I use requires convex blocks. I've tried to remedy this by using convex hull component before step 5 to insure the surfaces are convex.
I'm having issues sometimes with the alignment of top and bottom points. I think I just need to implement a component that sorts the points around a single basis so that there is no twisting.
I've been experimenting with convex hull as a general approach for defining the corner points, but I'm having problem take the convex hull curve and breaking it into a 12 sided polygon, preserving as much as possible the location of the flutes and the general shape of the contact surface.
I'm really sorry about the long post and complicated question. I hope someone can give some pointers on what I could try. I understand that this is not an easy question and that it is more a question of doing something rather than asking about grasshopper itself. My goal is to have an algorithm that I can explain as a general method for others to use in the future when dealing with these structures. This is only a small minor part of my thesis (the analysis is what is important) but it is taking a lot of time to figure out.
If you have any other questions, I would be more than happy to provide a better explanation. In the file I have created a region with all my input parameters. You can choose a different mesh from that point and change various settings. I hope that is self-explanatory.
Thanks for all your help,
Ali
BTW: I'm really sorry for the poor way I've done this stuff so far. I'm not a programmer and apart from some small macros in Excel I don't know much about this stuff. To add to that, I've just started with Rhino and Grasshopper about five days ago after almost pulling out all my hair trying to do this with AutoCAD!…
peuvent se diviser une surface avec ne importe quel motif imaginable. 3. Ici, je fournir un moyen de le faire via Lunchbox ... cela fonctionne mais il est fixe et donc nous avons besoin de jouer avec des arbres de données afin de créer le motif approprié par cas. 4. L'autre composante est un joint C # qui fait beaucoup de choses autres que de diviser ne importe quelle collection de points avec de nombreux modèles (voir le modèle ANDRE que je ai fait pour vous). 5. Vous devez décomposer une polysurface en morceaux afin de travailler sur les subdivisions. 6. Je donne une autre définition ainsi que pourrait agir comme un tutoriel sur la façon de traiter des ensembles de points via des composants de GH standards et des méthodes classiques.
Avertissez si tous ceux-ci apparaissent floue pour vous: Si oui, je pourrais écrire une définition utilisant des composants de GH classiques - mais vous perdrez les variations de motifs de division.
mieux, Peter
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and export the geometry out to VVVV to render it LIVE! RawRRRR. In this case, a digital audio workstation Ableton Live, a leading industrial standard in contemporary music production.
the good news is that VVVV and ableton live lite is both free.
https://www.ableton.com/en/products/live-lite/
i am not trying to use ipad as a controller for grasshoppper. I wanted to work with a timeline (similar to MAYA or Ableton or any other DAW(digital audio workstation)) inside grasshopper in an intuitive way. Currently there is no way of SEQUENCING your definition the way you want to see that i know of.
no more combersome export import workflows... i dont need hyperrealistic renderings most of the time. so much time invested in googling the right way to import, export ... mesh settings...this workflow works for some, for some not ...that workflow works if ... and still you cannot render it live nor change sequence of instruction WHILE THE VIDEO is played. and I think no one wants to present rhinoceros viewport. BUT vvvv veiwport is different. it is used for VJing and many custom audio visual installation for events, done professionally. you can see an example of how sound and visuals come together from this post, using only VVVV and ableton. http://vvvv.org/documentation/meso-amstel-pulse
I propose a NEW method. make a definition, wire it to ableton, draw in some midi notes, and see it thru VVVV LIVE while you sequence the animation the WAY YOU WANT TO BE SEEN DURING YOUR PRESENTATION FROM THE BEGINNING, make a whole set of sequences in ableton, go back change some notes in ableton and the whole sequence will change RIGHT INFRONT of you. yes, you can just add some sound anywhere in the process. or take the sound waves (sqaure, saw, whateve) or take the audio and influence geometric parameters using custom patches via vvvv. I cannot even begin to tell you how sophisticated digital audio sound design technology got last ten year.. this is just one example which isn't even that advanced in todays standard in sound design ( and the famous producers would say its not about the tools at all.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwz32bEgV8o
I just want to point out that grasshopper shares the same interface with VVVV (1998) and maxforlive, a plug in inside ableton. audio mulch is yet another one that shares this interface of plugging components to each other and allows users to create their own sound instruments. vvvv is built based on vb, i believe.
so current wish list is ...
1) grasshopper recieves a sequence of commands from ableton DONE
thanks to sebastian's OSCglue vvvv patch and this one http://vvvv.org/contribution/vvvv-and-grasshopper-demo-with-ghowl-udp
after this is done, its a matter of trimming and splitting the incoming string.
2) translate numeric oscillation from ableton to change GH values
video below shows what the controll interface of both values (numbers) and the midi notes look like.
https://vimeo.com/19743303
3) midi note in = toggle GH component (this one could be tricky)
for this... i am thinking it would be great if ...it is possible to make "midi learn" function in grasshopper where one can DROP IN A COMPONENT LIKE GALAPAGOS OR TIMER and assign the component to a signal in, in this case a midi note. there are total 128 midi notes (http://www.midimountain.com/midi/midi_note_numbers.html) and this is only for one channel. there are infinite channels in ableton. I usually use 16.
I have already figured out a way to send string into grasshopper from ableton live. but problem is, how for grasshopper to listen, not just take it in, and interpret midi and cc value changes ( usually runs from 0 to 128) and perform certain actions.
Basically what I am trying to achieve is this : some time passes then a parameter is set to change from value 0 to 50, for example. then some time passes again, then another parameter becomes "previewed", then baked. I have seen some examples of hoopsnake but I couldn't tell that you can really control the values in a clear x and y graph where x is time and y is the value. but this woud be considered a basic feature of modulation and automation in music production. NVM, its been DONE by Mr Heumann. https://vimeo.com/39730831
4) send points, lines, surfaces and meshes back out to VVVV
5) render it using VVVV and play with enormous collection of components in VVVV..its been around since 1998 for the sake of awesomeness.
this kind of a digital operation-hardware connection is usually whats done in digital music production solutions. I did look into midi controller - grasshopper work, and I know its been done, but that has obvious limitations of not being precise. and it only takes 0 o 128. I am thinking that midi can be useful for this because then I can program very precise and complex sequence with ease from music production software like ableton live.
This is an ongoing design research for a performative exhibition due in Bochum, Germany, this January. I will post definition if I get somewhere. A good place to start for me is the nesting sliders by Monique . http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/nesting-sliders
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ing the maps to the broader community.
At the moment, there are just a few known issues left that I have to fix for complex geometric cases but they should run smoothly for most energy models that you generate with Honeybee. Within the next month, I will be clearing up these last issues and, by the end of the month, there will be an updated youtube tutorial playlist on the comfort tools and how to use them.
In the meantime, there's an updated example file (http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=chriswmackey&fork=hydra_2&id=Indoor_Microclimate_Map) and I wanted to get you all excited with some images and animations coming out of the design part of my thesis. I also wanted to post some documentation of all of the previous research that has made these climate maps possible and give out some much deserved thanks. To begin, this image gives you a sense of how the thermal maps are made by integrating several streams of data for EnergyPlus:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJaTMtWDRHMExvLUk/view?usp=sharing)
To get you excited, this youtube playlist has a whole bunch of time-lapse thermal animations that a lot of you should enjoy:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLruLh1AdY-Sj3ehUTSfKa1IHPSiuJU52A
To give a brief summary of what you are looking at in the playlist, there are two proposed designs for completely passive co-habitation spaces in New York and Los Angeles.
These diagrams explain the Los Angeles design:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJM0JkM0tLZ1kxUmc/view?usp=sharing)
And this video gives you and idea of how it thermally performs:
These diagrams explain the New York design:
(https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz2PwDvkjovJS1BZVVZiTWF4MXM/view?usp=sharing)
And this video shows you the thermal performance:
Now to credit all of the awesome people that have made the creation of these thermal maps possible:
1) As any HB user knows, the open source engines and libraries under the hood of HB are EnergyPlus and OpenStudio and the incredible thermal richness of these maps would not have been possible without these DoE teams creating such a robust modeler so a big credit is definitely due to them.
2) Many of the initial ideas for these thermal maps come from an MIT Masters thesis that was completed a few years ago by Amanda Webb called "cMap". Even though these cMaps were only taking into account surface temperature from E+, it was the viewing of her radiant temperature maps that initially touched-off the series of events that led to my thesis so a great credit is due to her. You can find her thesis here (http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/72870).
3) Since the thesis of A. Webb, there were two key developments that made the high resolution of the current maps believable as a good approximation of the actual thermal environment of a building. The first is a PhD thesis by Alejandra Menchaca (also conducted here at MIT) that developed a computationally fast way of estimating sub-zone air temperature stratification. The method, which works simply by weighing the heat gain in a room against the incoming airflow was validated by many CFD simulations over the course of Alejandra's thesis. You can find here final thesis document here (http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/74907).
4) The other main development since the A. Webb thesis that made the radiant map much more accurate is a fast means of estimating the radiant temperature increase felt by an occupant sitting in the sun. This method was developed by some awesome scientists at the UC Berkeley Center for the Built Environment (CBE) Including Tyler Hoyt, who has been particularly helpful to me by supporting the CBE's Github page. The original paper on this fast means of estimating the solar temperature delta can be found here (http://escholarship.org/uc/item/89m1h2dg) although they should have an official publication in a journal soon.
5) The ASHRAE comfort models under the hood of LB+HB all are derived from the javascript of the CBE comfort tool (http://smap.cbe.berkeley.edu/comforttool). A huge chunk of credit definitely goes to this group and I encourage any other researchers who are getting deep into comfort to check the code resources on their github page (https://github.com/CenterForTheBuiltEnvironment/comfort_tool).
6) And, last but not least, a huge share of credit is due to Mostapha and all members of the LB+HB community. It is because of resources and help that Mostapha initially gave me that I learned how to code in the first place and the knowledge of a community that would use the things that I developed was, by fa,r the biggest motivation throughout this thesis and all of my LB efforts.
Thank you all and stay awesome,
-Chris…
h, and using the BScale and BDistance are creating havoc somehow too. I've simplified first, and used the Kangaroo Frames component along with setting internal iterations, to make MeshMachine act like a normal component, along with releasing the FixC and FixV. The FixV didn't make any sense anyway. I've also set Pull to 0 to speed it up during testing, since much less calculation is involved to just let the meshes collapse, prevented from disappearing altogether by using a mere 15 iterations.
Also, your breps are open so that allows much more chaos and then collapse, though they did manage to close themselves too at times. Here is closed breps with a full 45 iterations:
So now that it's working, lets re-Fix the curves, and the problem arises that there is an extra seam line that is getting fixed too, running along the cylinder, stopping the mesh from pulling tight under tension wherever a vertex happens to be near that line:
So lets grab only the naked edge curves instead:
And what happens if we lose the end caps, now that we don't have an extra line skewing the result?:
There is no real curvature differences since it's not a curvy brep so the Adapt at full 1 setting has little to do. Now what does the BScale and BDist do? Nothing! Why? Your scale is out of whack, 99 mm high cylinders but only a falloff maximum of about 5, so let's make the falloff be 25 instead, but I must restore the end caps or the meshes collapse away for some reason and freezes Rhino for a minute or so the first time I try it:
It's a start.
If I intersect the cylinders, nothing changes, since they are being treated as separate runs. MeshMachine outputs a sequence of two outputs though, due to Frames being set to a bare minimum of 2 needed to get it to work, so I filter out the original run, which is just the unmodified initial mesh it creates.
The lesson so far is that closed meshes are much less prone to collapse and glitches leading to screw ups.
A Boolean union of the cylinders is when it gets funner, here show with and without the fixed curves that seem to define boundaries too where really there are just polysurface edges:
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owing a tutorial is easy and adapting the idea of it again - it's not a fuss - i guess my skills are at 1 - since I can not yet stand alone! However I am very determined to nail this program to the ground and be at a 9 by Easter - of course that means a lot of work and hours testing - but I am young and ambitions!
I am a revit user and I just switched over (from the dark rigid side) to rhino because of a simple math problem which has to do with variations and combinations.
I am investigating the form factor for my thesis.
Form factor= building envelope (the area of the facade+the area of the roof+the area of the footprint)/the total area of the floors.
I have started by defining a specific set of parameters such as height, number of floors, maximum total floor area so I can compare the results.
Therefore the floating number will be the facade area - which in the end, considering the height is a constant - ends up being just the length of a certain shape - circle, square, triangle ...
I have done the calculation through excel after extracting from revit but only on simple shapes as follow(the following examples are my own analyzing work):
My problem is: I need a way to get all possible shapes that meet the criteria i put in - which at the moment will be defined by square meters of a floor- that is why galapagos comes in - I need it to make all possible combinations that can be computed that meet the criteria - so then the user(myself or who ever else want to use it) can make an informed choice. I am not looking for a square - circle, sphere or anything I can manually create by just using basic geometry, I am looking for all the possible combination that equal the same area.
(plan view)
After i can solve it for one level - i will constrain that all the levels add up have specific total area - so if a level get's bigger in size another one gets smaller. Again run it through Galapagos and get all possible outcomes (like the sections below)
I am aiming to get an outcome from which you have options to pick out of -> a design process not a specific shape.
You are thinking too complex - not that it's a bad thing - but I am looking for something more simplistic than that. I need a shape - windows and panels are for later use in my process and at this early stage completely irrelevant - and that will be another percentage math problem rather than aesthetics. I just need shapes to morph based on input parameters.
I hope this was an interesting read for you and I really appreciate your patience with me.…
t. This was a reasonably effective workflow for the purposes of solving the initial problem. (in reviewing this post, it seems a bit lengthy, but hopefully it's of use to others).
Link to Illustrator Script example:https://forums.adobe.com/thread/508138
Portion I used: This applies to entire illustrator document. I am using Illustrator CC 64 bit and this worked okay. Tested a few times and it failed once, but a restart of Illustrator fixed it.
var v_selection = app.activeDocument.pathItems;SwapFillStroke(v_selection); function SwapFillStroke(objSel) { for(k = 0; k < objSel.length; k++){ var subSel = objSel[k]; var c_fill = subSel.fillColor; var c_stroke = subSel.strokeColor; subSel.fillColor = c_stroke; if(!subSel.stroked) subSel.stroked = true; subSel.strokeColor = c_fill; }} redraw();
My goal was to export colored geometry, (analysis meshes for example), from Rhino and get it into illustrator with solid fills.
If you want to know how meshes are colored in rhino...there are many explanations here on the forum, a quick search will get you more detailed information.
Short version: export your lines from rhino to illustrator and run the script listed above to make the stroke color the fill color. (in illustrator, shift+X will swap the fill and stroke colors on individual objects, but does not work on multiple objects..hence the need for the script).
Detailed Version:
In my case, I had 2 case studies I was working with.1 - wind rose meshes generated from Ladybug/honeybee2 - A mesh terrain that was colored by pre-set slope values.
NOTE: There are a few plugins to bake objects with color. I used Human tools, (Bake Geometry and JustifiedText3D).http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/human (lots of other great stuff in there too!)
I had two types of geometry. (2 different definitions)
1- An analysis mesh, (HoneyBee/LadyBug),
2 - Lines generated from mesh faces. (mesh terrain/slope values).
Export results as a DXF, and choose "do not explode". (these were my settings)
DXF seemed to produce the most consistent results.
(you could export/save as an AI file and just open them in illustrator, but that seemed to give inconsistent results with the script).
Open DXF in Illustrator:
Apply Script in illustrator:
In the terrain example, there are only 5 colors, so selection in illustrator, by color, is very easy. In the results from honeybee/ladybug, (or any analysis process I imagine), the default colors are created with a much wider range of values. I presume the legend is then created by an average of those values within a range. My point is that, with the analysis results, selecting objects by color in Illustrator is probably not a very effective workflow.
I only tested this on my instance of rhino and Illustrator. mileage may vary.
In summation, at this point, it seems that the best way to get colored mesh faces, into illustrator, is to export the meshes, (which really ends up being the mesh face edges...curves), and bringing them into illustrator and running a quick script to swap the colors. Once that is complete, you can then select ALL the objects, and change the stroke color/weight at once.…