Author: yinghy

The project started with the research about the jewelry and accessory. I quite like the sphere shape. I want to create a ball with holes. The holes create a special environment for the leaking light. It also has a function which can hold products. For adding some more interesting detail, I thought about a spiral shape. To achieve that, I tried different ways.

Intentions

initial idea

 

First attempt – Millipede

In the beginning, I tried to use the component ‘ISO SURFACE’of millipede to achieve a surface with holes. It works, also easy to use. By this component, I got very ideal shape and pattern. The spiral is smooth and beautiful. However, when I check with 3D printing department, unfortunately, it’s not printable. The mesh is very very screwy.  Due to there are too many details and some nurs are really sharp therefore the wall thickness is too thin. It’s difficult to keep a balance between printable wall thickness and size while keeping the shape elegant.

unprintable shapes

                                                     spiral shape without holes -printable.

Attempt 2- Voronoi

I don’t have too much time to change the project. So I go back to the very basic sphere model which I did in my midterm project. I tried to use ‘ VORONOI’which plays a similar role, it helps to create cells on the boundary box, then ‘BREP’ to the sphere. For making this project more interesting, I move the original cell in two scales, one inside the sphere while another outside. I also want to get cells in different sizes. To achieve that, I set up the 73 cells into a list, Then I set the size of the cells randomly.

Through this way, the cells are in three scaled group, and they can create various patterns by changing the scale, be sharper, or more round.

  

with scale

without scale

The distance can be adjusted to create the height of each cell. If I adjust the distance and scale at the same time, that’s another shape.

loft and create mesh

 

100 families

3D printings

I tried to print on the campus at first, but they asked for a flat surface at the bottom, so I cut the shapes into two pieces.  Shapeways doesn’t have this requirement.

  accessory lamp

 accessory lamp

accessory

families

accessory

Actually, I designed two independent design projects. However, I think they are different but closely connected. As a geometry, the sphere is beautiful but in the meantime, it’s not so flexible as other polyhedrons. For example, the cylinder has more possibilities with shape and I don’t have too many sliders, it’s still a bit simple.

The process is tough, Grasshopper is cool but really difficult to understand and use. I spend a lot of time to follow different tutorials and find a similar one with my idea then create something new. I often have problems even I did the exact same thing with the tutorial.

 

A good attempt, but unfortunately not printable because there are too manydetails. Moreover, it’s a jewelry so the size could not be too big.

I tried to change the scale but I only can change the frequency of the spiral shape, it still doesn’t work.

test by millipede

Millipede is cool to create this kind of ‘cells’. By changing the frequency of the spiral surface, the geometry is different. However,  I can see these kinds of sharp turning transition are not printable.

transfer holes to the sphere- ‘BOUNDRY BOX’ —‘ISO SURFACE’

add edge – ‘PIPE’

2D interiors project

As the first exercise we did by grasshopper, it’s a tough process to understand each component and use skillfully.

The precedent I followed is a 3D surface, it also can be used as a wall pattern. In the beginning, I wanted to make a curved surface with this hexagon and hollow out the circle pattern.  Therefore, my first test used the morph component to hollow out a circle. The first step is making two polygons and boolean difference. The second step is making a curved surface which I can control the fluctuation frequency.

This method works but I failed to get the hexagon shape. The shapes I can get are very basic polygons such as cones and cubes. However, it’s difficult to make a hexahedron.

My second test used ‘Project’ so firstly I used the same surface,  but I tried to project the hexagon shape on the surface. However, I don’t know how to get the hollow circles in the hexagon frame. 

The third test I used a flat surface… I divide the surface into small grids and get hexagon shape through creating Points and Centrepoint and connect them with lines. Thus I can get the small triangle surfaces. Then I used Offset and get the hollow circle. I also can change their sizes by changing the distance. The next step is using Scale and Move to change the size and position of some ‘special hexagons’ and I used Swatch to change colors.