Object Design Shenanigans and Occurrences

This blog has been sorely neglected over the past few weeks, so it's time to update. Firstly, the candelabrum. In my hubris I thought that the definition was already good enough and so printed some scale models to show off tragically I was sorely mistaken, certain parts didn't print at all, and others did not attach. It's fortunate I printed this baby scale ones first, as the birthday candle scale one would have been a disaster. sadly that is all I have for now, as I've been pretty consumed by the more urgent (and more successful) group project. the basic idea was a product improved gripper claw, we tossed around a billion ideas which I won't cover in detail here eventually I hit on the idea of using tensioned fabric to improve the surface area of the grabber claw as clearly illustrated by this comically illegible drawing mock ups were hideous but seemed to prove the idea worked. From there I made a basic illustrative model in Rhino, initially it was go...

I have to say I'm pretty happy with how this project has ended up turning out, I didn't achieve every single thing I wanted, but it's basically all there, all of my high-concept ideas were met, just a few details I wanted that I couldn't quite make happen To start with, I enhanced the definition of the body of the piece compared to last week, to give it greater variability in form This is my own great disappointment, I had wanted stylized legs that would array around the based of the object using the vector definition- but for the life of me I could not figure it out, alas. Fortunately, this was pretty secondary, so it's not a massive loss, hopefully I'll figure out that tool eventually  Here's the actual candle holders, simple cups, initially it was a piece of geometry in rhino that I was using as a brep, but I later switched to a parametric tool as well, this will make it easier to have the object actually be functional, it's ge...

I'll preface by saying this week was less productive than it should have been so I'll have some catching to up to do over reading week unfortunately, but that's the way it goes. I was initially going to make the main body of the candelabrum as a piece of geometry in Rhino, but I decided I could have a much greater variety objects if I parameterize that as well. So that's what I focused on I didn't like the initial results at all, it didn't look very good lofted as one object so I experimented a bit the surface from points definition, but for the life of me I couldn't actually figure out how it worked in the context of this tool. Eventually I decided on something much simpler, but it's nice and clean and the definition should be easy to expand into more ornamental elements As you can see there's still a ton to do, something important that I cannot figure out for the life of me, is how to make the arms of the candelabrum always bend upwa...

Thumbnails and concepts are always very fun to me, it's all the pleasure of having good ideas, with none of the actual effort needed to see it though. I didn't worry so much about achievability, but I did try to focus on ideas that could be heavily patameterized to have dramatic effects on the sillouhette of the object, not just a few ornamental elements. I liked the aesthetics of number 10, but couldn't quite decide how to apply it to furniture, the rest aren't very exciting, though 11 has potential, objects made out of a single tube, makes me thinks old windows screensavers. though I didn't end up using it, number 12 was a close second, A table with it's surface made of overlapping 'branches' would have looked very cool, but I felt it didn't quite meet the criteria of being able to have it's sillouhette dramatically altered. these ones are pretty much bunk, I had felt that I already found what I wanted but decided to push a l...

To begin with on this project, I significantly revised my initial definition, I removed the elements of extrusion, as I wanted flat geometric designs for the drawings, I also made the remaining elements far more elegant, I particularly thought the rotations on the arrays is much better and more user friendly now, maybe there's an even better solution, but this was a significant improvement. Nothing to fancy or ambitious here I will admit, but I feel more confident in it's functionality and my understanding of it's elements The original version is shown above, and my improved definition below Here's 3 designs I decided to use, as they appeared in Rhino, soon to be drawn by a robot, I think the final one is particularly successful, it's quite dynamic, and looks like a top-down view of a pyramidal structure to me. I unfortunately ran in to some big problems that delayed my printing, the first is entirely on me, I ac...

 I wasn't quite sure where to go with this project so I decided to create  something fairly straightforward, a nested array of objects. I created an initial array of rectangles, and then set the resultant array on a polar array, and then arrayed those  arrays on a grid. The result allows variable range of surfaces, but is also very fiddly and prone to odd behavior.  I then decided to extrude those objects in a random range, however I find the behavior of the random function extremely odd, and don't think I fully understand it's behavior, the importance of the range versus number of seeds for example, or why it seems to break down at larger values, this is something I need to figure out before I use it much more, as the random functions as used in this definition are mostly random guesswork that led to a functional result Here's the final definition, not many complexities going on here, I'm not taking to Grasshopper as readily as Rhino but it is st...