Hello everyone,
I’m trying to make the waffle structure. For example, 1st photo below is the model that I want to materialize. Furthermore I think that it would be a real deal to make intersections for every plate manually.
The method I am willing to materialize it is via laser cut. Is there a fast automatized way making these plates intersect with each other?
I did a project exactly like this for renowned artist Zachary Oxman- (link here)
https://www.zacharyoxman.com/collections/freestanding#/dignity/
this horse has a waffle structure made from plate, in which he then skinned with hand formed bronze sheet.
the process is this…
take the single surfaces (no thickness) and intersect them. This gives you the location of the intersection. you then dup border.
this gives you a profile with little perpendicular slashes that show you where the intersections are.
you offset the slashes in both directions and then curveboolean to get a trimmed profile. from there you simply make a planar surface and thicken it.
to be clear, this is tedious, repetitive work that requires a lot of focus to keep organized.
GH wizards may be able to automate this, but I had to brute force it.
see image
other way to do it is to make your waffle structure with thickness, and make copies of those surfaces that are cut down to where the slots will be. then boolean and repeat…
still a lot of work, but depending on your organizational proclivities, may be easier to keep track of.
This is just a brainstorm rather than a well-considered idea.
Perhaps you could create two intersecting sheets at 90 degrees to each other with their intersection slots in them too. Size them in such a way that you can array them in two dimensions to the extent required for your finished object with their edges touching within tolerance. Make them as tall as they need to be to contain the height of your object.
This would give you a rectangular cube waffle.
Then place your object outer surfaces “inside” it so that you can trim the waffle to shape.
fwiw, Zach is a supremely nice and helpful guy. You are welcome to contact him to discuss this project. I’m sure he’d be willing to offer some tips on his workflow. He’s made several refinements to this process over the years and has I’m sure found efficiencies I am missing as he uses this type of structure a lot in his work.
tell him Kyle sent you.
