Polyhedra and Conway Operators

Grasshopper
1

Hi there,

I’ve recently discovered @dale’s Polyhedra plugin, which is great.

It would be great to have an additional tool to use Conway Operators on the geometries generated to create even more variation.

Some of these operators are available in existing plugins like Kangaroo, Weaverbird, nGon, etc. and I have a few implementations in Python using Plankton by @will and @Harri_Lewis, but it would be excellent to have an implementation that makes many or all of them available within one framework.

It would be particularly nice to have a solution that builds on the Conway Notation letter coding to allow a series of transformations through given an instruction like ‘adc’ (ambo, dual, chamfer).

OpenSCAD has an implementation of this, which is documented here.
http://kitwallace.co.uk/3d/solid-index.xq?mode=operators

It looks like @richard_schaffranek did some work on this, too, that he could contribute?

Please let me know your thoughts.
Thanks!
Mathias

2 Likes
2

Hi @mathias_gmachl,

I have a nearly complete implementation of the Conway polyhedron notation using plankton, I am happy to share it if someone would be interested in continuing development, maybe via github?

It is missing some things, and most of the operations work only closed meshes which is something I would love to extend.
Since Rhino 6. Rhino supports ngones so I would also like to use rhino nativ mesh… that also would be a create opportunity to correct a few mesh face orientation errors I have…

I would love to extend it, and maybe develop a plugin. This is why I would like to continue in C# and not switch to python.

Let me know your thoughts…

Are you working on something using Conewaay Polyhedron Notation? I have invested some time on creating clay moulds for various generated forms…

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Hi @richard_schaffranek,

thanks for your response. That sounds like a great start. Plankton can be incredible fast at these tasks and I have seen different solutions that help with naked edges.

Personally, I am not good enough in C# to help you with developing a plugin version, but I’d be more than happy to offer help with testing and documenting.

@will and @dale is this something interesting enough for McNeel to invest time in or should we look into finding more independent developers?

@Petras_Vestartas would you be interested in joining this effort?

My interest in this subject comes mainly from using meshing and remeshing to develop fabrication approaches by starting from low polygon representations and creating more detail through a series of mesh transformations.

Planktons half-edge data structure is also really useful to create continouus patterns from the mesh that directly translate into textile techniques like weaving, lacing and knitting.

Thanks!

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Hello @mathias_gmachl, @lando.schumpich

I have opened up a github, I think it would be better to continue discussion there. For the moment it is private, so if you would provide me your mails / user names on github I can invite you, but it should get public at one point…

If you are not on github maybe open an account…

best

Richard

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This is an interesting discussion, I was previously unaware of this work, thank you bringing it to my attention

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Hi @richard_schaffranek ,

My github handle is

mathiasgmachl

Please add me to the project. I will contact a few people about joining.

Also, if you’ve already implemented an Ambo transformation, please let me know. I’m using an ngon implementation atm and it is extremely slow for the large meshes I’m working on.

Looking forward to working with you

Mathias