Parametric Elephant Troubleshooting - Grasshopper

[kip_jarrett]

Hi Everyone, as the title suggests I am trying to create a parametric elephant in a way that is very similar to how waffle structures are created. Basically I am using the mesh 3d model of an elephant and slicing it in grasshopper using contour and extrusion parameters but for the pieces going in the x-direction I want them to flow along the shape of the elephant rather than going through in a straight pass. I am also wondering if there is a way to clean this up a bit as making small adjustments to the slider bars take my computer a couple minutes to load. Lastly I need my lap joints cut through lets say 75% in the x-direction intersections and 25% in the y-direction intersections rather than it being 50/50 like I have it here. I am pretty new to Grasshopper so any help would be greatly appreciated!

I would like to get my sections cut in the x-direction like the way I have it drawn up on the right side of the elephant

This is a very similar example to what I am going for

Elephant_X.gh (257.1 KB)

[BTH]

this thread may be useful, but the example photograph looks like there was a fair bit of manual sculpting / deletion / insertion of the contours as well.

Heat Method

A script demonstrating the Heat Method for Distance Computation, as described here This came up recently in another thread, and I thought others might find it an interesting example. It is a fast way of getting approximate geodesic distances from a given point to all points on a mesh. Here solved in an iterative fashion, without any extra numerics library. This is not the fastest way to do it, but it does let you see what’s going on and interact with it. HeatMethod2.gh (163.7 KB) …

[kip_jarrett]

Unfortunately this will not work for my purposes because it creates somewhat jagged and complex curves. I would need a straight cut at an angle so it can be exported for CNC operation. What an amazing tool though! Extremely interesting and very fun to use!