te some implications and questions so I will go one by one:
"Now I would like to use a single VRay material as a template for creating multiple identical materials"I hope this will work, but as VRay does not expose any SDK, I would not guarantee any specific result.
"Now I need to add them to the document material table"This is done with a reference to a document instance, such as the one you get with the code doc.Materials (both in C# and Vb.Net).
"I'm not going to learn C# to modify his script"That's a pity, it would be nice to pass on this troublemaker to somebody else! :)Btw, C# and Vb.Net are very very similar. This script could be written in Vb.Net too.
"Reference to a non-shared member requires an object reference. (line 96)"This only means that you need to access the Materials property on an instance, not on the type (class) name. Change that line using what is written at point 2.
"Do I understand that the material has to be assigned to a particular object in order to enter the Material Table?"No it does not. But if you call the _Purge command it will be removed if it does not have an object that references it.
"Can I assign it to a Layer instead?"You do not need to. But this would be achieved with doc.Layers[whichLayer].RenderMaterialIndex = materialIndex; in C# or doc.Layers(whichLayer).RenderMaterialIndex = materialIndex in Vb.Net.
"Any ideas? A better way to do this?"If you found a way to bypass the VRay SDK not being there, this should work.
"Giulio's component has a type hint defined as a Material"It does not any longer. The hint was there in earlier versions of Grasshopper, but now the hint has disappeared. This is not so bad, and it is also the only way you would be able to use either a Material instance already or a string for a material name.
"How was that done?"Probably it was done in an older version of Grasshopper. But which version are you using?
"I can't figure out how to cast the input as a Rhino.DocObjects.Material, so you can see that I have cast it as a compatible type in the first 2 lines... is there a cleaner way?"That sounds like a good way actually. Be sure your component responds properly when something wrong is inputted, though.Dim mTemp As Rhino.DocObjects.Material = CType(M, Rhino.DocObjects.Material)in one line might also work. See msdn for more conversion operators and functions.
I hope this helps,
- Giulio_______________giulio@mcneel.com…
are invisible in the picture.
So what you see it's a common band that has lost all those characteristics of the original in order to protect the process.
We also did an "invisible setting" prototype which has built in Flexibility.
If you are in the jewelry industry you would know what I mean and it is close to a miracle.
It's a shame I can not share details and this is why I am planning my next major work on something 10 times more complex then this, at least.
It's will be for my own business and for the jewelry industry as well.
I hate to tease people and then not to be able to produce anything more than an image.
But I thought it would be better than nothing, at least for jeweler designers, so they can see that there are more and more users and that complexity it is not something to shy away from, and it's worth the time spent because the returns on production are far larger than for special orders and this is why GH is useful.
We can design a piece of jewelry usually in less then 1 hour, hence GH is not really worth the time.
But for production with so many variables (Finger sizes controlling most of the outcome together with stone sizes etc.) then GH it's a MUST!
I really appreciate everyone's comments and suspicions and I understand why.
99% of the people out there do not really understand the complexity of jewelry at the industrial level. It' s not just form but the post-production that's the killer.
This industry it's still an hybrid of technology and art with, and due to the lack of the old school pros, unfortunately, we face very lousy and unpredictable execution in the post production (after the casting process). This leaves you with a design process and intention that requires a lot of control over every possible variant of the object.
One wrong design aspect it's multiplied thousands of times at the benches (for every single piece) = bad profits!
It sound more serious that it is but very few companies are willing to do so (delivering good product vs low quality and this also happens because the consumer is not longer aware of the difference. So, who does keep quality, it's only because of integrity, third party QA or just pride).
This is way GH is invaluable. This is why that Def looks like out of proportion for that (Visual) simple band.
It is because there are dozens and dozens of variable effecting everything else. In fact it is not even complete as it is in order to cover everything but the most critical ones.
Sorry for the long replays. I am an instructor and a professional jeweler by trade since I was very young and I love to teach, so I overflow with explanations... and Components :)).
Next time it will be "in the open" as they say...…
uments:
1. You are targeting CATIA don't you? (not exactly tomorrow but ... soon) and/or SolidWorks (hello C# haven't we met before?).
2. You MUST deal with nested block instances instead of what you are trying to do right now (I'm talking about the real MERO things not abstract Lines and points). This is not doable with GH components I'm afraid (but it's rather easy with code).
3. You MUST deal with RDBMS in order to keep track with what's going on in your company per project per case per designer (who sells that bolt? what's his cat name? is he a reliable supplier? what I'm doing in life? ... that sort of "queries"). At this point: CATIA is 1% CAD things and 99% PLM stuff (Product Life cycle Management). We do want that since it's 21st century running don't we?.
I hear you: but these are 3 arguments ... indeed but ... hey who's counting? he he.
Method:
A. This def attached has a very simple C# that gets mesh Pts and makes a nice U/V style collection of points (DataTree in plain English).
B. Then we go to that umbrella sticks thingy: we can calculate anything (already the thing does "some") plus your collections of divided points (with the right way, he he) VS a given node: you said (Skype) that you want to calculate angles with these (from 2 to 6) in mind: obvious since you are doing real-life MERO things.
C. Then we could calculate the appropriate Planes for PlaneToPlane transformations: get a nested instance definition (the red things that you've showed to me yesterday) placed at 0,0,0 (Plane.WorldXY) and put in in every Plane collection related with every node (clash defection is an obvious must).
Case resolved, closed: what about that Vodka?
More in Skype
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merely automates finding clear intersections between pairs of objects and then splits the objects along those intersection *curves*, deletes the trims, then joins the remains, and cycles on. But within the confusing Rhino Settings tolerance value, wherever surfaces actually just sort of come closely together, there *is* *no* clear intersection curve. So it bugs out and stops working EVERY time you try more than a dozen or two spheres.
Some software can do this by switching to volumetric pixels (voxels). $9K-$30K Geomagic Freeform is an example of this. It also fails sometimes, often due to memory issues, as you can imagine since it needs to fill all inner space of each sphere definition with 3D pixels.
Materialize Magics for $16K can often handle such Booleans well. It will take a seeming lifetime to figure out such often pirate software kludges though.
One thing you can try though is to simply drape a mesh or NURBS plane onto the top of your spheres.
There's a well known *reason* your Booleans are failing. Nobody here has yet even hinted at it:
The main reason is that Rhino/Grasshopper developers don't care about the human element. The math exists to make this work very fast, every time. It just has to join things *right*, incorporating human knowledge of kissing surfaces, instead of acting stupidly, like some pocket calculator. But that would involve hacks that make 99% of complex Booleans work instead of 10%, and we can't have that since it will be SLOWER for the other 1% that just happen to have no nearly kissing or really kissing surfaces.
You could also use the new Cocoon plugin to do a surface *around* your structures, with a given radius of extension beyond the spheres, then offset that surface back the same radius. That is 100% robust, but won't offer quite as sharp of intersections, more rounded, like most everybody wants anyway.
You can *test* Boolean failures, by running a Grasshopper intersection command, to see the intersection curves, and zoom in to see how badly many of them are, all knotted, or twisted, or even with gaps, often with gaps.
It's a math problem nobody at McNeel wants to solve, sorry.
Just write a check for $25K and spend six months taking notes, like I did, and you can merge your simple spheres finally.…
Added by Nik Willmore at 6:33pm on October 20, 2015
nowledge, tools, materials and machines. The Clusters provide a focus for workshop participants working together within a common framework.
Clusters provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, processes and techniques and act as a catalyst for design resolution. The Workshop is made up of ten Clusters that respond in diverse ways to the sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities. The Call for Clusters is now open to proposals which respond in innovative ways to this year's challenge.
Deadline: September 19 2011
More information can be found here:
http://smartgeometry.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=129&Itemid=146
sg2012 takes place from 19-24 March 2012 at EMPAC (http://empac.rpi.edu/) and is hosted by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, upstate New York USA. The Workshop and Conference will be a gathering of the global community of innovators and pioneers in the fields of architecture, design and engineering.
The event will be in two parts: a four day Workshop 19-22 March, and a public conference beginning with Talkshop 23 March, followed by a Symposium 24 March. The event follows the format of the highly successful preceding events sg2010 Barcelona and sg2011 Copenhagen.
sg2012 Challenge Material Intensities
Simulation, Energy, Environment
Imagine the design space of architecture was no longer at the scale of rooms, walls and atria, but that of cells, grains and vapour droplets. Rather than the flow of people, services, or construction schedules, the focus becomes the flow of light, vapour, molecular vibrations and growth schedules: design from the inside out.
The sg2012 challenge, Material Intensities, is intended to dissolve our notion of the built environment as inert constructions enclosing physically sealed spaces. Spaces and boundaries are abundant with vibration, fluctuating intensities, shifting gradients and flows. The materials that define them are in a continual state of becoming: a dance of energy and information.Material potential is defined by multiple properties: acoustical, chemical, electrical, environmental, magnetic, manufacturing, mechanical, optical, radiological, sensorial, and thermal. The challenge for sg2012 Material Intensities is to consider material economy when creating environments, micro-climates and contexts congenial for social interaction, activities and organisation. This challenge calls for design innovation and dialogue between disciplines and responsibilities.sg2010 Working Prototypes strove to emancipate digital design from the hard drive by moving from the virtual to the actual in wrestling with the tangible world of physical fabrication. sg2011 Building the Invisible focused on informing digital design with real world data. sg2012 Material Intensities strives to energise our digital prototypes and infuse them with material behaviour. They have the potential to become rich simulations informed by the material dynamics, chemical composition, energy flows, force fields and environmental conditions that feed back into the design process.
More information can be found at http://www.smartgeometry.org…
radiance parameters to get rid of blotching. To add another level of complexity to my problem, I am running simulations with a translucent material with the following properties: void trans testTrans
0
0
7 0.478 0.478 0.478 0.000 0.010 0.178 0.635
I have had no issues with the renderings when I use clear glazing, as seen on this image:
However the blotching-issue becomes very noticeable when I introduce translucent glazing into the scene:
For the two above cases I used the following parameters:
_av_ is set to 0
xScale is set to 2
_ab_ is set to 6
_dc_ is set to 0.5
_aa_ is set to 0.2
_ad_ is set to 2048
_st_ is set to 0.5
yScale is set to 2
_ps_ is set to 4
_ar_ is set to 64
_as_ is set to 2048
_ds_ is set to 0.25
_pt_ is set to 0.1
_dr_ is set to 1
_pj_ is set to 0.9
_dp_ is set to 256
_dt_ is set to 0.25
_lr_ is set to 6
_dj_ is set to 0.5
_lw_ is set to 0.01
I ran another test with increased Radiance parameters and got the following output:
with the following parameters:
_av_ is set to 0
xScale is set to 6
_ab_ is set to 6
_dc_ is set to 0.75
_aa_ is set to 0.1
_ad_ is set to 4096
_st_ is set to 0.15
yScale is set to 6
_ps_ is set to 2
_ar_ is set to 128
_as_ is set to 4096
_ds_ is set to 0.05
_pt_ is set to 0.05
_dr_ is set to 3
_pj_ is set to 0.9
_dp_ is set to 512
_dt_ is set to 0.15
_lr_ is set to 8
_dj_ is set to 0.7
_lw_ is set to 0.005
Although the second blotching case is much better than the first, it is still very bad for hours when the sun is lower in the sky. The above images are rendered for a clear sky at 18:00 in Germany in a West-facing room.
Sorry for the long post! Can someone help? Kind regards, Örn
…
the space that you are designing and your design intent. Just think about an atrium vs a museum. And now think of the atrium in two different climate zones. As a [lighting] designer you make the decision on how do you want the space to be, how the climate is and then try to take advantage of skylight and/or direct sunlight to achieve your design goals.
2. Yes. There is a watchTheSky component next to sky types which let you visualize the sky. There is also an example file that you can check.
3. This one again depends on your model. For your model I would suggest a minimum number of 4 for your final analysis. -ab is only one of the parameters. Check this slides by John Mardaljevic if you want to have a better understanding of radiance parameters and their effect on the results.
I also added the link to "Tutorial on the Use of Daysim Simulations for Sustainable Design" by Christoph Reinhart to teaching materials. I encourage you to at least read chapters 1 and 2 of the tutorial. Check pages 25 and 27 have two examples about selecting the parameters.
Great questions. Keep them coming.
Mostapha…
the space that you are designing and your design intent. Just think about an atrium vs a museum. And now think of the atrium in two different climate zones. As a [lighting] designer you make the decision on how do you want the space to be, how the climate is and then try to take advantage of skylight and/or direct sunlight to achieve your design goals.
2. Yes. There is a watchTheSky component next to sky types which let you visualize the sky. There is also an example file that you can check.
3. This one again depends on your model. For your model I would suggest a minimum number of 4 for your final analysis. -ab is only one of the parameters. Check this slides by John Mardaljevic if you want to have a better understanding of radiance parameters and their effect on the results.
I also added the link to "Tutorial on the Use of Daysim Simulations for Sustainable Design" by Christoph Reinhart to teaching materials. I encourage you to at least read chapters 1 and 2 of the tutorial. Check pages 25 and 27 have two examples about selecting the parameters.
Great questions. Keep them coming.
Mostapha…
evel in which each final branch contains a list of one number from each list in all its variations with the other two lists.
12
AB
xy
Becomes eight possible combinations:
1Ax
1Ay
1Bx
1By
2Ax
2Ay
2Bx
2By
Either I could immediately break into 8 branches or branch twice from 2 items to 4 items then from those 4 items to 8 final items. I keep trying grafting with all manner of tree components and *never* obtain a simple dual branching fractal tree structure. I barely even need a tree actually, but I'd prefer each final branch to contain a list I can pull each final value individual value out of rather than dealing with string extraction. This is all to eventually plug all these variations into a parametric mesh model that now uses three sliders, and Python script also to bake them all as OBJ files.
Crucially I also need to obtain the numbers to use as part of my multiply exported OBJ files. I can so far only get a single range to export as a series of OBJ files automatically but not the whole three list array of them.
…
ace when I start running Galapagos/Octopus (below is "room orientation optimization" shared at http://hydrashare.github.io/hydra/viewer?owner=mostaphaRoudsari&fork=hydra_1&id=Room_Orientation_Optimization&slide=0&scale=1&offset=0,0) It may take quite some time to see some results. That's fine for the above simulation. But my real challenge is, when I am going to optimize room dimension with respect to ASE and sDA calculations, either Galapagos or Octopus goes wildly and never come up with a solution. I believe the time-consuming calculation, especially sDA with higher -ab numbers, trigger the lag a lot? Any suggestion/trick to improve it?
Most importantly, based on your experience, for example to optimize window/exterior shades sizes and achieve ASE<10% and sDA>55% (LEED v.4 requirements), Octopus (due to its capacity of multiple objectives) is the only choice? Any other approaches within grasshopper?
Many thank!
Cheney
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