Planarizing an NGON mesh

[DanielPiker]

Hi @nathanlundberg77 - Do you have an example of the kind of mesh you are looking to planarize?

It’s simpler when the shape is convex, and the more sphere-like it is the easier.
Here’s an example

planarize_ngons.gh (16.3 KB)

Note that with hexagonal meshes the panels generally need to change shape quite significantly to become planar.

In other cases it can sometimes be better to use the tangent-plane-intersection method

Planar faced mesh from points

Here’s a very simple implementation of the tangent plane intersection method tangent_plane_intersect.gh (29.1 KB)

See also this old discussion

PLANARIZE cells coming from Kangaroo simulation

Making planar hexagons is quite different from making planar quads. With quads, provided they are reasonably close to the surface curvature directions, it is usually possible to make them planar without changing the shape too much. With hexagons though, when you have regions of negative curvature (which your shape does around the funnels, and between the domes), it is geometrically impossible to make all the hexagons both planar and convex. Some of them have to become ‘bowtie’ shaped. If you …

I find planarized hexagonal meshes (unless they’re essentially domes) tend to end up with unavoidably quite awkward looking and ugly shaped panels, just because of the inherent limitations caused by having 3 edges per vertex and planar faces. There are certain shapes such as hyperboloids where regular grids of bowtie shaped faces are possible, but for really freeform shapes with a mix of curvatures, making them into planar hexagons generally looks like a mess wherever the curvature changes.