Principal Curvature Orbits

Here’s a quick preview of the May 20th release of the SPM Vector Components Grasshopper plug-in. These screenshots show the Orbit Detection parameters working with the new Line Continuity and Constrain to Surface modes. These new modes let the integrator pass over singular points and avoid awkward stops and kinks at the expense of directionality. Therefore it works very well with principal curvature fields, but maybe not so much with principal stress fields (where it would interchange the pure compression direction with pure tension….structurally not always a good idea).

SPM Custom GH Components

The Studio for Progressive Modelling (SPM) has  started development of a couple custom GH components:

This one produces a principal curvature line emanating from a point on a surface – lines that are useful for constructing panelizations of freeform surfaces consisting entirely of planar quadrilaterals and prismatic structural members. It has been proven that surfaces with these characteristics are significantly more cost effective. However, the aesthetics of these panelization schemes are often quite pronouced, and so this component is a light weight solution that allows designers to see what kind of principal curvature mesh a given surface might suggest.

See Evolute  and Daniel Piker’s work in this area for other aspects of panelization with planar elements. I find the latter approach very interesting, as it does not depend on a setting out the curvature lines as an initial guess – even though these are fundamental to the construction. Or are they?

We’re also working on some Rhino to Revit/SAP links, and hope to post some information on those soon.