Hi all, I would like to request that Grasshopper Paneling Tools support Block Instances. You see, I’m very much interested in replicating the capabilities of the 3ds Max plugin Railclone. In my opinion Paneling Tools ,with some few tweaks, could probably replicate if not surpass Railclone’s capabilities. The difference is Instancing. I’m experimenting with some scripts but unfortunately in the Grasshopper Environment Paneling Tools can’t support Block Instances.
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Hi,
Very valid suggestion. It is not as straightforward because GH does not support blocks as input. I will investigate how I can add support to blocks directly through PanelingTools. I added it to my list
https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/PT-185
You can use the Human plug-in along with paneling tools to do blocks in grasshopper
Thanks rajaa. Can i also request a possible feature? It’s about trimming the panels. Here is the scenario:
Suppose that I want to populate a surface with modular 4"x 8" spanish tiles. If my surface is irregular and I divide it by length, the faces produced are the modular (4"x8") and the smaller non-modular. My concern is on the smaller non-modular ones, instead of box morphing the Spanish tile unto these, can we instead orient it to those and automatically trim it with the surface’s edges? Im basically asking for a Clipping Spline functionality similar to 3ds Max’s Railclone.
Thanks
That sounds doable, but just to be sure I got your request can you share an example of the expected result? Thanks
Hi Rajaa, here is a video sample of what I’m saying. Railclone uses instances to optimize performance and memory and automatically explodes instances which will be cut or morphed to fit the appropriate shape. Hence the need for a Boolean or trimming function and a smart geometry instancing system.
Also I have an example to demonstrate my problem, as you can see in the picture when I divided the surface by length it creates smaller non-modular rectangles of different sizes. Now If I want to distribute regular panels say slate roofing then trimming wouldn’t be needed and I could just scale the panels, however if I wanted to use roman clay tiles then using a scaled version to close the smaller ends would be unrealistic and a trimmed tile would be preferred.
Thank you.