Hi! I’m trying to automatically thicken mesh like the following: it has high curvature at the ‘mountain top’ so, I get bad geometry (self-intersecting) when I thicken (I need >45 thickness)
I also show a ‘manual’ version I want to get automatically. It’s good for my project because:
1 it’s bijective (I hope it’s the right math word): every vertex from the original mesh has a corresponding vertex in the thickened surface, no more, no less .
2 it preserves topology (no bad geometry like edges poking through faces)
3 it sacrifices even thickness to achieve 2, which is the perfect solution for me
Grasshopper file: thicken.gh (12.2 KB)
Quan Li kindly pointed me to some concepts like ISO functions in this earlier question, but I have no idea what they are. Perhaps those functions are a possible solution? 'Smart' mesh thicken (ok to sacrifice even thickness) - #2 by Quan_Li
Thanks for your help Quan! Using convert-to-volume to workaround erroneous geometry is a great method! But this seems to increase density a lot and the inside is not as smooth as the outside (it’s very sharp)
Thanks very much René! This result (purple mesh in your picture) is really good! I am trying to understand it with your Grasshopper document
I am making model with lots of bumps like these, and I’m trying to find good way to thicken while keeping the squares topology
Another way to phrase my goal is, I’m trying to make my thickening amount the minimum amount. Since maintaining this amount (>45) under the bump makes vertices too close to each other, ‘relaxing’ the thickened surface so that the thickness simply increase is perfect!
I am glad it helps - the placement of the mesh, parallel to the rhino grid, made it easier for this type of play. I would be curious to see what other similar meshes you have? The solution might not always work if they are not oriented the same way.
Dear René, Thanks for your reply. I made progress on the mesh and ran into more problem:
In addition to high-curvature place run having geometry error, the edges of the offset-ed surface also have geometry error.
The problem is, mesh smoothing, which seem to fix the geometry error, don’t work enough to smooth high-curvature places, and seem to ignore the edge of the mesh.
I realize what I need now is to have good mesh offset. If that offset is correct, thicken will work (like in your method for my earlier simple case example)