Looking for some insight or solutions for 3D lattice structures for 3D printing. We are involved in footwear and looking to expand our knowledge base on 3D printed lattice structures. We have had moderate success using nTopology, but it is not really ideal for all design applications.
As footwear is pretty organic, usually when dealing with lattice structures, to get the desired shape and density we have to make trimmed lattices with little deformation. However, when it comes to 3D printing, having open beams (caused by trimming) causes issues and isn’t aesthetically pleasing. I have seen examples of how people have manage to close these beams but I’ve been unsuccessful on finding any meaningful workflows that allow you to use any lattice, trim it to desired shape, and then close all exposed beams. I’ve attached an image reference of what we are hoping to be able to do.
The trick lies in the technique. What you call “The lattice” is a kind of cell agglomeration, each cell’s border becoming a pipe. Now the representation of the cell border is a curve. This is an important detail because operating on curves should give you the results in figure b
The way I would go about it is this:
Figure out the cell structure that creates the lattice that I want.
Intersect the cell structure with the bounding shape to get the intersection curves
Pipe the intersection curves and the inner cell boundaries.
Done.
Yes you can do that in grasshopper. There’s a component within Crystallon that merges open ends, and another that removes them. The better solution would be to create the lattice morphed to the skin of the shape you’re trying to lattice. Plenty of ways to do that.
