Creating developable surfaces from trimmed spheres

Grasshopper
1

Hi :slight_smile:

I’m trying to design a pavilion that contains an inflatable bubble-shaped structure.

The design part is practically finished, but I can’t deal with the construction problem. The bubbles are built through the union of sphere, the sphere must be made of fabric so that they can inflate, so to produce them I need to create surfaces that can be developed.

I worked only a couple of days on the problem and aware of the problems of developing a sphere I decided to ask for help :slight_smile:

I hope it will interest you!

ThanksUnrolling Trimmed Spheres.gh (263.9 KB)

Cattura
Cattura.PNG937×908 82.6 KB

edit: I am aware of BIG take on this

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If you make the profile a poly line rather than from arc segments you practically generate truncated cone surfaces that are developable

1 Like
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Thanks for the answer but I don’t understand what profile curve you’re referring to

the horizontal circles or the vertical arc?

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If you look at the spheres they are basically revolved arcs. So if you rebuild this vertical profile into a polyline, your revolved shape becomes developable

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2 Likes
7

IVY plugin check this out
https://youtu.be/duhqUVn0R9E this video too

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Also - although a single sphere will keep it’s shape when inflated, I think you’ll find a boolean union of spheres like this will tend to wrinkle around the crease where they join. (I wonder if that BIG project had some additional internal structure to avoid this)

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You’re right, once you define the geometry I’ll have to check with kangaroo or physical models.

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Thanks for your advice, I’ll try different approaches