How to create birds nest or similar? - possibly without grasshopper

Hi all,

What methods could I use to create similar forms to these:

I am pretty capable on Rhino so I know how to create the underlying forms using curves/lofts etc, it’s more turning a form into the kind the kind of wire mesh shown in the photos. Also might be important to be able to draw splines/curves straight onto the shape to give it some variation.

I do state without Grasshopper but if the process is much easier then please advise

Thanks

Martin

Have you tried PanelingTools for Rhino?
http://wiki.mcneel.com/labs/panelingtools

Actually looking at it now, looks really straightforward…

Any other ways of going about it would also be interesting

Build surface first and use contour command? Finally pipe?

There looks to be similarities I used to model a human brain earlier that can be applied here…

Or,

in my opinion Grasshopper is still the easiest way to get what u want. those pic has slightly different fundamental and perhaps the birdnest is the most challenging one =

1.Birdnest = create underlying Srf in rhino, using Weaverbird or Kangaroo plug in you can extract the naked edges (in case you want to modify the base surface). extract isocurve from Srf and u can play around with Graphmapper to get a non-uniform look). divide isocurve into 3 - 4 point and use component point closest srf. the trick is to shift the data tree for the mid point to “bend” while traveling from the bottom to the top. rewire the curve with “interpolate crv”,
play around with the slider and u can get a good result.

2.this is the easiest one, create several vaults Crv, evaluate point on Crv, and adjust every 2nd data tree to have tighter curvature. ( this will give that jagged look, or simply make every 2nd curve longer than the 1st)
use poly line with vertex data provided to connect all the structure.

3.this one can be easily done in rhino. create a base geometry (G1), convert to mesh, triangulate and pipe

4.u can use weaverbird with just 1 click to achieve this :smile: both rhino and GH will produce the same.

hope that helps

oh btw, for Grasshopper related question you can go to grasshopper3d.com.

1 Like

Thank you all for your responses, I’ve been using the Paneling tool so far which are great but I will try a few of the other techniques too.

To be honest I find Grasshopper a little daunting, I’ve tried a tutorial but really didn’t enjoy the whole node thing, I’ll give it another go and see if I can become more familiar with it

tweening can be using alot also with this stuf,

Or for instance sweep2 and extract isoparms,…

there is a Basic Grasshopper tutorial called “Algorithmic modelling” by Mohamad Khabazi. it explain the fundamental of Grasshopper and it is very easy to follow. it has many study cases that cover different section of Grasshopper., how to use specific component, and It would be very useful for you…

also Grasshopper forum and Rhino Mcneel forum is very alive so you can always ask somthing on the forum and they would be very happy to help you.

considering that almost all 3D application are now implementing this Node-based modelling(or visual-based scripting). it is worth to master Grasshopper. David Rutten, the creator of Grasshopper has made GH very easy to use. intuitive component and all I can say it is by far one of the best visual-scripting editor I have known for parametric modelling.

1 Like