Trouble creating a solid from a mesh height map

Grasshopper GH for Mac
1

Hi folks,
I’m trying to turn a depth map of a photo into a solid so I can export it to fusion 360 and program my CNC router to cut it into a piece of wood. The idea here is that the image will be visible when you shine light through the wood. The difference between the thinnest point on the image and the thickest will be quite small (0.011" and 0.025"), so accuracy matters. I’ve successfully turned the image in a height map, but am having trouble turning it into a solid.
So two questions:

  1. How do I enclose this mesh into a solid rectangle where the base of the solid starts on the xy plane? (I want it to start on the xy plane because I already have sliders for setting the proper height of the lowest and highest points of the image surface above the xy plane.)

  2. What’s the best way to export this to fusion360 to preserve accuracy?

Thanks

Image height to solid.gh (465.6 KB)

2

Just following up here. Anyone have any ideas?

3

Why did you use a mesh instead of a surface?

Image height to solid_2020May18a
Image height to solid_2020May18a1354×618 237 KB

Image height to solid_2020May18a.gh (578.1 KB)

And why two Image Samplers?

4

I don’t know the aspect ratio of the image (wait, it’s 576 by 572 pixels or a ratio of 1.007) or the final dimensions you want but I would think something like this is more appropriate to the thickness you mentioned? A “Closed Brep” solid, not a mesh.

Image height to solid_2020May18b
Image height to solid_2020May18b1715×534 302 KB

Image height to solid_2020May18b.gh (298.1 KB)

You could push the resolution up to 572…

5

Very helpful, thanks. I tried both mesh and closed brep - neither was working for me. There are two Image samplers because one samples colors and the other greyscale for the height map.