Hi All,
Trying to get my mind round the Node Sizes option on SubD Multipipe. Fun!
What is the recommended way to cap the ends of the meshes? I can convert the SubD to a mesh and use the M+ Mesh Caps tool, and then convert it back, but this seems cumbersome. Why are un-closed SubDs even possible?
multipipe3.gh (18.2 KB)
In other news: I need an adult!
Bob
Thank you so much for doing this. I am clearly still learning this stuff!
The fact that you are casually taking a SubD output and feeding it straight into a Brep Join and a Brep Edges component is the part that I find bewildering, as a relative beginner. Sometimes such things are outrageous coercions, that just work, and sometimes perhaps a SubD really is just a Brep surface. No way to find out but to try it! This is a huge conceptual mountain to climb.
I wish there was a way to select a component output and then have the view of available components change the colour of those that would accept the output as an input. Having them change colour to red after the fact is useful, but being able to see what might work in advance would be a good learning tool. Perhaps invalid links should not even be supported, and would refuse to link?
I still think that it would be natural for MultiPipe to provide a mechanism to cap ends, as the old Brep Pipe does. But I will keep your recipe for the future.
Thanks again,
Bob
Hm! Now I grok that SubDs can be fed into standard Brep components, I see that the standard Cap Holes works on my MultiPipe output, although of course it just caps the holes straight across, generating circular ends, rather than generating an elegant point.
The M+ Mesh Caps tool can also accept the output from the MultiPipe, but it operates on the underlying control polygon, not the SubD. One gets square caps, not circular ones.
mentioned here too…
https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/strange-multipipe-subd-result/116527/4
And I found the attached notes from @DanielPiker useful too.
MultiPipeNotes.pdf (477.3 KB)
Thanks so much for this - Daniel’s notes are golddust! Where do they come from? Is there more there on other components?
It is a shame that there is no Help button for components that could explain this stuff… Oh! Wait!, there is: it says:
SizePoints (Point)
SizePoints
which is, frankly, insulting.
I wish that the grasshopper components could be documented along with the Rhino Command Help, which is relatively superb. Sigh!
But thanks again.
Bob
Wow - Daniel’s PDF is probably the best explanation I’ve seen that shows how a GH component works. Was he able to do that because he wrote the MultiPipe code? Or did he just experiment and figure it out by trial & error? At any rate that PDF would be a good model for more documentation of GH components.
The notes were posted on another thread about MultiPipe. I assume he wrote them.
Impressive indeed - congrats.
That must have come from a pretty big machine - industrial size?
Would be great to see it in stainless steel - provided someone else paid for it.
I don’t know! I don’t have a machine myself - I just sent an STL file off to Shapeways, which makes it their problem. Although it was about $100. Sigh! They do a bunch of materials. This white plastic was the cheapest. They do all sorts of metals too, but for something of this size it would be completely prohibitive in cost.
I think it’s also good to add a “mesh refine” from kangaroo1 to make it no so sharp.
