Image Sampler of Grasshopper saves life if used responsibly. While explaining the component to this year’s ARCH362 students, I used this simple example that generates numbers from a beautiful picture of “metal foam” and uses it to generate lots of circles: Metal foams are lightweight but strong materials, that are typically produced by injecting gas into the liquid metal. Of course, it becomes easier to teach something when you manage […]

Finally, I had a chance to test and understand the force fields tab in Grasshopper. It creates a continuous vector field inside of a given boundary. Therefore, it is very useful if you want to create an effect of the continuous presence of a force, such as gravity. The Wikipedia definition of a vector field is very basic and understandable: In vector calculus and physics, a vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point […]

Another tutorial we’ve analysed together with ARCH362 students last week was the one that mimics Zaha Hadid’s Kartal Masterplan. Although the project of Zaha Hadid was pretty much controversial among Turkey’s architectural critics (and most people also), we’re not dealing with how successful or “ugly” it is, but the most simple version of the technique that generated such forms. We have a term “çakma” in Turkish that means “conscious imitation, possibly […]

Gaudi-like columns are generated as part of the “boolean” classes of Design Computing. The most inspiring, beautiful, and ugly variations are often done by boolean intersection, as this operation is the surprising one of the three brothers. While the class deals with the concept of emergence once again via solid and void relationships, constructive solid modeling techniques are introduced. Although it is widely used as a spatial analysis approach in […]

This video is dedicated to Design Computing and Basic Design students, who “contour” and then move each section by hand in Rhino. They do it individually to fabricate their laser-cut homework from cardboard. It could also be a macro but I prefer this. Because it does not work in all conditions. Maybe you should orient your contouring results similar to those shown in the video, and then use the shear command […]

This is a project proposal designed at the workshop organized together with Simge Esin Orhun and Fulya Akipek as part of the International Wood Day Exhibition in İstanbul. This time, the final Grasshopper definition is created “after” some experiments with physical models. Here is the first model showing the idea inspired by the folding chairs studied here. I realized that in order to make a “wall” instead of a chair, it would […]

This quick project was about a special tiling pattern inside a multi-story residential building’s hallways in Grasshopper. While drawing the construction documents of the project, it was necessary to apply some coding here, as each floor had a different shape to be tiled. Although it is not a real Herringbone tiling, I named it because I couldn’t find a better name yet. First, I’ve imported the geometric boundaries and the “middle curves” […]

Euclidean constructions, when represented computationally, rely on algorithms and mathematical principles to generate geometric shapes and forms. Through precise calculations and logical operations, a computer program can emulate the actions of a compass and straightedge, constructing lines, circles, and polygons with accuracy and efficiency. These digital incarnations of Euclid’s timeless techniques enable the exploration of geometric concepts and the creation of visually captivating representations. This project is interesting because of […]

This is a macro exercise in Rhino, showing that Rhino is pretty much capable of automating some cool text effects. Just copy and paste the below code into the command bar of the Rhino, or open the macro editor by typing macro edit, then paste it there and press play. You’ll enter any string when prompted, then the macro handles the rest of the process. You can play with the […]

This is the Grasshopper definition that generates a tetrahedral helix (also called as Boerdijk-Coxeter helix) but in a funny way. This geometry is also a solution for tangent spheres. I generated the helix using Anemone components for recursion and gave it a little bit of responsiveness. I don’t know if it depends on the speed of your CPU but if it is slow enough, you’ll see the snake game of tetrahedral […]

We are back! Here are some Revit components I’ve created for a project. These and other cool downloads can be found at revitcity.com T_Room Tag T_Parking Space T_Door Tag A Door

Third and the final outcome of the Animate Patterning workshop is coordinated by Mehmet Ali. Students tried to develop a kirigami-like surface animation (which is also a good solution to my one-servo question) while they studies numerous variations. They ended up with this panel, ready to be moved by Arduino; The workshop is organized together with Mehmet Ali Altın and Fulya Akipek. Students are, Murat Akırmak, Gizem Ceyhanlıer, Cem Kıyak, […]

Here is another student project from the three-day workshop we conducted together with Fulya Akipek and Mehmet Ali Altın. Briefly, the idea was to develop a system of cogwheels that spin together to animate an entire pattern. It was about to develop a kinetic system with a simple Arduino-based setup, probably with one servo and a motion sensor. The integration of the cogwheels system and the underlying pattern was interesting […]

This is one of the works of the three-day workshop at Eskişehir Anadolu University, called “Animate Patterning“. This project is based on our previous folding experiment posted here, while students advanced it, testing a folding style called “Miura”. They built a 2.5m x 1m folding pattern, explained briefly here. After analyzing, and testing the folding technique, they drew the tessellation composed of a single parallelogram. They joined the structure together with hinges and […]

It seems that our first-year students of architecture, interior design, and industrial design take Rhino’s macro functionality very seriously. This encourages us to study algorithmic techniques more and more in the freshman year Design Computing class. Below are some of the results of this week’s assignment. They explicated the modeling process of their prototiles into macro codes, ready to be molded. Zeynep Dutipek developed the macro to reconstruct her prototile with different parameters. She […]

Inspired by this cut-fold pattern, we developed a prototype with Fulya Akipek. The first experiments were made from 3mm thick foamboards and they worked very well with 50×70 plates. However, when the project gets bigger and bigger, we needed to add a joint detail and use 5mm thick foamboards to achieve our goal (that is to develop a 1m by 2.5m shutter system). Then, we tried to animate its folding behavior by […]

This is one of the ideas we’ve tested for the workshop “Animate Patterning“. Inspired by this work, Apart from the pattern that turns around, the torque, rotation radius and speed of the servo, weight, connection detail, and a number of foamboards become important inputs for this design. In the three-day workshop, one group of students interpreted this idea of using several moving layers and creating an emergent pattern at the […]

This is a Cycloid-like family of curves, generated by its classical description: a rolling circle. I had several other studies on similar topics before. In this cycloid experiment, I used Grasshopper in which, we don’t need to roll the circle. Instead, we can divide a parametric curve, utilizing data lists to simply rotate a circle around it. Finally, evaluating the circle repeatedly creates a Cycloid-like result. I found this as […]

While testing Anemone components for Grasshopper, I accidentally generated these branches by looping. In fact, I was trying to develop the definition that mimics the well-known “Arch SED” component method. This method uses the tangent vectors for the endpoints of the arcs. Then, it iterates the process in a random fashion so that the branches (arcs) join nicely. Anyway, this definition develops new branches from a previous one. It does […]

Here is the simple Grasshopper definition [GHX: 0.9.0072] that activates Rhinoceros’ camera by given parameters. Camera position is determined by the “point-oriented” method here. This means that you have to have a target point for the camera first. In fact, I was trying to find a suitable command for getting the actual camera position of the Rhinoceros but I think it is impossible (for now). I couldn’t track the camera object by its […]