Touching surfaces/finding nearest neighbours

Rhino Rhino for Windows
1

I have ellipsoids packed in the BCC & hexagonal symmetries and I am wondering how to find the number of ellipsoids are touching each other?

Thanks!
Lovéni.

2

You might want to post a Rhino file. It will be easier to help…

3

Of course, I have attached the file here.
Thanks!
touching-surfaces.3dm (3.1 MB)

4

Hi Lovéni -

You can use the MeshIntersect command for this.
In your case, none of those objects are touching each other.
-wim

5

Hi Wim,
Is there a certain threshold that I can use of the distance between each ellipsoid to identify how many contacts (/near contacts) there are?
Lovéni.

6

Hi Lovéni -

The command has a Tolerance option that could be set to a (modified) document tolerance.

Those are two different questions, though.

I was trying to provide an answer to the first question, and, when you can “cheat” by changing the tolerance, that answer becomes “all” instead of “none”, I suppose.

For your second question, I guess with a regular pattern like this, it’s easy enough to just count that there will be 504 points of contact?
-wim

7

Hi Wim, sorry for the confusion. I meant how many contacts there are, do you think there’s another way to figure this one out?
Thanks,
Lovéni.

8

Hi Lovéni -

If counting is not allowed, you’d need to create slightly larger spheres that cleanly intersect and then use the Intersect command.
-wim