Is there a way to evenly distribute grid points on a sphere using paneling tool? The method I know has the points crowded on the top and bottom. It’s a piece of jewelry I’m designing, and I’m trying to put patterns on a ball, and they have to be of the same size. If the paneling tool cannot do it, is there an alternative way?
Can you use one of the Geodesic Icosahedra or other polyhedra from the Rhino Polyhedra plug-in as the starting point?
http://www.food4rhino.com/project/rhinopolyhedra
Proceedure:
Create the desired polyhedra as a solid
DupEdges and select the polyhedra solid to create a set of lines
Intersect and select all the lines to create a set of points
SelDup to select duplicate points
Delete to delete the duplicate points.
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This is not straight forward, but you can come close.
In general, the PT has a command to create a grid with equal distances grid. The command name is "ptGridSurfaceDistance’. In the case of a sphere, I would split and use only one half or one third. Also, you need to choose the center point as a reference point to start creating the grid based on it. This way you have a better chance to cover as much of the surface as possible.
Another method is to extract isocurves (rings) of the sphere at the desired distances, then use ptGridUCurves with “ChordLength” method to divide. You can again use portion of the rings to get better result.
Next, I would use ptOrientToGrid to distribute the stone using grid points as a center without distorting the stone.You will probably always need to do some manual adjustment along the seam.
See attached example for the details and let me know if you have any questions.equalspherepoints.zip (135.9 KB)
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Thanks a lot for the detail response! I encountered two problems: 1) Some points aren’t distributed evenly near the edge of the hemisphere, and 2) The object doesn’t orient to all the points on the grid. I guess I’ll try to experiment with different distance. Thanks again.
If you get stuck, feel free to post or email me the file.