Thicken mesh: (sacrifice even thickness for correctness)

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

thicken Edited V0.gh (22.5 KB)
Like Dendro.

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Or V8 Shrinkwrap. Shrinkwrap is very good.

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Can ‘sacrificing’ thickness be something like this?


'Thought of a few ideas for your particular case/mesh - here’s one that could be playful:
thicken.gh (24.3 KB)

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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!
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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.

Best

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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)

Many Thanks,
thicken_harder.gh (40.1 KB)

thicken_harder Edited V0 UserObjects.gh (58.7 KB)

I made @René_Corella idea into UserObjects.

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The result is looks very cool Quan! Thanks very much for sharing! I will take some time to understand your method.

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You are welcome, and Thanks, @René_Corella!

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