Parametric Modeling

Ok, back to the arch670 grind...

I attempted to venture into the Generative Components version of parametric modeling, to no avail. I have a feeling Grasshopper will be my best bet. The UI is much friendlier and more intuitive. Maybe dumbed-down is the more blunt way of saying that.

Moving on to the actual study of the parametrics, I did the tutorial of the sunshade to try to grasp how to map out the grasshopper commands. I did that fairly successfully, which is the image below.

Here, I was just aiming to grasp things like the slider, list items, and other tools to see what was actually happening. Otherwise, the grasshopper format just appears to be a bunch of car battery wires tangled up.

Using the mapping I got from the tutorial, I tried to apply them to several curves to see what kind of forms I could create. Below is the overall mapping sequence and also a detail of each command.

All of the commands lead into a lofting tool, as you can see with the big wire-esque pieces all leading to one hub. This loft followed whatever parametric parameters I set with the corresponding sliders controlling each point on the curves, as hightlighted in purple. The first iteration is seen below.

From here, I did a series of iterations rotating the curves themselves in Rhino and also changing the values of the points, which only move in an X direction. The next step of this would be to insert a slider to allow the point to change in a Y direction as well as create multiple points to allow for a much more dynamic surface creation. It's pretty amazing that a set of parameters can change a form so drastically and so quickly.