arranged in a helix around the lamp’s contour. I tried a few approaches but I don’t get ahead. My first idea was to create a helix, create some variation in the diameter of the helix as well as the diameter of the extruded circle - I wanted to subtract this from the “pure” lamp in some kind of volume operation - but this does not work somehow. Further different approaches did not work as well.
Has anyone had a similar challenge or good hints with which approach to start? What are topics/techniques I should explore? Are there relevant plugins?
Thanks for the hints! I achieved some progress, but now things get beyond my abilities… I have created “raw” fins with some room for the grooves, added the array polar, added a varying helix (both in path and diameter) and intersected them. In a simpler test, I did a union of the intersection curves and subtracted it from the fin - worked out well. Now I went for six helices, but then the union does not work out anymore… I would like to get 36 unions of intersection curves which I can then subtract from each fin - but there seems to be some issue with data organization (maybe use Path Mapper??).
you could also use a surface to surface morph. there is a component and a rhino command called _FlowAlgSrf .
You basically build your pattern 2d, like shown above and simply morph it into your fin-like shape. This however means your fins need to be single untrimmed surfaces. But that’s not so difficult, I guess.
