Surface Diagrid

Tutorial by:

Philip Bussey (buss0136@umn.edu)

This tutorial will go over how to use the Surface Diagrid grasshopper definition and look at some of the controls and limitations. More info can be found on pages 84-88 in the Grasshopper Primer.

Open "Surface Diagrid.3dm"

This definition works by taking two curves created in Rhino and lofting them to create a surface. The first thing we'll do is set each of the curves as grasshopper objects.

Command - right click each curve icon and "set one curve"

We'll create the surface by lofting these two curves, and we'll also define the number of subdivisions so we can control the concentration of the Diagrid.

Commands - Loft, Number Slider, Divide Domain

Next we need to isolate each of those subdivisions and explode them so we can access the individual curves and points of that object.

Commands - SubSrf, Explode

We'll isolate each vertex and draw lines to opposite corners by using the list item command to grab each of the four different vertices of the surface. The surface from four points command will be used to create the new faceted surface and connect the alternating list sets of the vertices to draw the curves that will be the centerlines for our diagrid structure

Commands - List Item, Panel, 4 Point Surface, Line

Finally we'll use the pipe command to extrude solid circular shapes along each of those new curves and add a slider so we can control the radius of the object

Commands - Pipe, Number Slider

Any type of surface generation command can be used at the beginning of the command or you can import your rhino geometry. You can also change the definition so you don't have the same number of U and V subdivisions