Week 10 (Part1): Scripting the Final Form in GH

Once the final form had been finalised by Michael using the script from week 9, I then recreated it in a more controlled and tidier way.

Firstly, Dom had created a floor plan that the group agreed we should follow. The floor plan is beautifully fluid in shape and caters for all the groups needs as well as takes in to account pedestrian flow.

I took this floor plan and imported it as a Bitmap in the Top View in Rhino. I then traced over the floor plan using curve:interpolate points

THE SEPARATION DISK

The centre disk was very simple. I simple referenced the curve in GH and extruded it by 3cm which was the recommended height by Alessandra.

THE ENTRANCE WALL

The entrance wall needed to be tapered off on both ends while having a slight bend to the top of the wall. I started off by extracting the control points of the referenced curve. Taking these control points I then used Gene List to assign each control point a z-vector value to be moved. By using gene list instead of graph mapper like last week we are able to manually control how high each control point will be in while also still keeping the form parametric. These moved points were then generated into an interpolated curve.

This curve was then offset by .6m (curve 1) and then moved upwards in the z direction by .296m (curve 2). All curves excluding the offset curve (curve 1) is plugged in to a merge node.

The loft node was then used to create the final surface.

THE MAIN FORM

I used the same method as the entrance wall to generate the middle curve of the main pavilion form

The top curve would be different however, in comparison to the entrance wall. The main form top curve also needs to have its points moved, similar to the middle curve, so that a shelter is created as seen on the floor plan Dom had created. The points needed to be moved in the normal vector direction of the point along the surface. To find this vector, pull point (pull) was used then plugged into two point vector along with the original moved z direction points. The display vector component displays the direction of the vector and as seen below this method has been successful.

Once these points were moved at a certain unique vector value using gene list again, a line was created using interpolate curve and moved in the z direction once again.

For the entrance wall, the curves were then simply lofted, however when a loft was used for the main form, there were strange lips in the form that would not be able to be fabricated and constructed.

My idea to fix this problem was to use network surface instead of loft. Network surface utilises U and V curves to generate a surface which make the form finding more controlled and accurate. I created a cluster that extracted a point on the bottom curve, middle and top curve using number sliders. These points were then merged and generated in to a curve.

As seen below, this is what the clusters look like when all the necessary V curves were generated. Clusters are an awesome way to tidy a part of your script that is being repeated. It made the script so much more tidy and simple for other to use and modify if needed.

The final form was then created using network surface and turned out quite successful.

SOME THOUGHTS

Some of the group were not sure about the central disk as a lot of us thought that people would simply walk over it. Some ideas that were thrown around were

• Getting IoT group to line the disk with LEDs to attract attention to the disk and simulate the flow of people through LED animations.
• Combine the entrance wall and disk in to a triangular shape that tapes towards the middle of the open pavilion area
• Make it a bench, a place for people to rest
• Remove it all together.

The issue with IoT LEDs was that it would not be very effective during the day.

The issue with the triangular shape is that it would make the central space less open and could be an obstruction

The issue with the bench idea is that it would cause unwanted congestion in the entrance/exit area

Finally, removing it all together would defeat the aim of being able to control the flow of people.

Dom will then take this script and modify the entrance wall, Nariddh will complete the panelling and Montanna will perform a Karamba analysis.