Hi, I’m new here and am currently designing an Art Car for Burning Man. I am trying to get these panels to come off of the model next to each other in strips. I want them attached to each other so i can laser cut them as strips and then bend them and then weld the strips together as per the marked up image. I need to provide the angle of the bend and the bend line etched on the panel also.
Can anyone point me in the right direction for how to get panels to; Join together, unfold, flatten to the C plane and then have the angle etched on there?
I’m really new to this, I’ve been putting in a lot of effort but I’m finding it quite difficult. If anyone has any tips I’d be incredibly grateful.
As for the internalized geometry that you develop into the shape in your image, you must know that none of those faces that resemble hexagons are planar, eh? WAIT! Now it looks like all 86 curves and surfaces near the gradient component are planar after all They weren’t…?
For what it’s worth, this is a reorganized version of your code with few changes. All the code above and left of the purple group is unchanged. The purple group is another way to construct your holed hexagonal (planar) surfaces.
It can be opened in R7 since you internalized a base surface. I don’t know why it’s so large though? Appears to be because of OpenNest, for some reason?
Your diagram labeled “OPTION 1 BENT STRIPS” shows connected hexagons at a different orientation than your color image? Not sure how to do that, other than manually constructed lists of the numbers shown?
P.S. I don’t know why this GH file is so large? (6.7 MB) After some trial and error, I replaced the Srf param labeled “Pieces to nest” and the file shrinks dramatically. OH I finally see it now. When the input wire is disconnected. there are still 167 surfaces internalized.
Hi Joesph, It been quite the journey designing this art car. Last night I put on a meditation to call in Arc Angel Michael, thank you for answering my calling
Thankyou for your input. I was advisied that OpenNest 2 is buggy. Hence why I’m on 1.5.1.
Oh, I am totally up for manually constructing a list. How do I do this and how do I buy you a beer?
Yes, but it was hiding inside a param that was re-used for another purpose, perhaps left over from a previous OpenNest project. It was bloating your GH file by 6+ MB for no reason
Looking further, I found and removed this boat hiding (internalized) in a different re-used param:
So the GH file is now only 79 K, down from a whopping 6.7 MB. hexagons_2024_Jul21a.gh (78.0 KB)
I also re-saved your Rhino file as R7 so people without R8 can see it, though it’s not required to open the GH file: CLEAN HEAD - 21-7-24 - rhino7.3dm (7.6 MB)
It was until recent fixes, but R8 GH itself is still buggy too. I believe PackageManager in R8 will installl the latest 2.1 OpenNest so until your GH is modified to use it, I will use R7.
Doing that will mean that any GH changes before the purple group I added would likely break the sequence of planar hexagons and any list that depends on their current sequence.
I don’t know how to do what you have described but it sounds interesting.
The lists are arbitrary, some might be too long? Or not as straight as you would like? While a bit tedious to create lists of numbers, it wasn’t that bad.
I want to emphasize this point again though:
These lists of panel numbers will be garbled if changes are made to disrupt the sequence.
This version breaks up some larger strips and passes them through OpenNest. I discovered one number that had been included in two lists, might be good to have code check for that.
Looks like the sequence of branches got out of sync.
I adapted code from this work last week to measure angles between adjacent faces using two methods, which give the same results. As to a “bend line”, that should be obvious as you have two vertices to reference that define that line.
There are two sets of Point List components in this code that refer to the same center points, both in pink groups. One here in the gray group and the other in the purple group. Works best to disable preview on one or the other.
I’ve managed to place the angle dimensions at appropriate positions on the seam between each pair of faces. (white group) It was a little more difficult than I expected…
I’m still not sure they are positioned correctly but they are very close.
P.P.S. Sorry, second update to this post. Based on this close-up image (below, and careful reasoning, of course), I think this one is more correct. The angles have always been accurate, it’s the positions of the arc dimensions that have been difficult. (version ‘Jul21f’)
Before I forget, I’ll post this which replaces Scale with Offset Curve. I think it looks better. I also puttered with labeling the OpenNest parts but failed to make any breakthrough so stripped that code out,
They weren’t…?
I finally see it now. When the input wire is disconnected. there are still 167 surfaces internalized. 
