3. Computer-Aided Design¶

This week, I was sure of that, I do not know anything about CAD! Not this week, because I reviewed the keywords of this lecture before. There are a lot of 2D and 3D design programs. It’s a great world, and every program is a single world! My advice here is to discover the whole world and compare between them, and use from each one what you need, to reach the ideal result.

And there is no ideal in design!

So, I start from Computer-Aided Design Lecture to select the programs that I’ll use and before that need to understand the specific assignment for this week.

The assignment¶

What is parametric design mean?¶

When we start in a new project that includes the multi-skills need to integrated, We make a lot of trials to fit every part with others. So if we start with the design process with a parametric tool, it will be more easy to edit and save a lot of times and give us the chance to try a lot of variables. That you add your design instead of a specific dimension, we add it with a variable like ‘X’ then we can change X to any specific value that we need.

Parametric tool¶

Free CAD¶

There is a lot of software as a parametric tool… I liked Free CAD that Neil has shown us tutorials in the lecture and he highly recommended it.

My journey to learn Fusion 360 for the first time¶

I have previous experience with Fusion360, it was November 2017 in Maker Diploma program from Fab Lab Egypt and funded from American Center Cairo. It was the first time to use and discover Fusion 360. Many thanks to my instructors Aser Nabil, Mohamed Kamel, and Mohammad Abu El-Haggag to help me a lot!

I think it is not a bad tutorial to get started.

Grasshopper¶

I started with Grasshopper. Grasshopper is a perfect parametric tool. I have previous experience in Grasshopper, thanks to my professor Mostafa Rabea Abdelbaset, I have known grasshopper from him. I learned from him a lot. Then doctor Ayman Wagdy, the Genus! I attended three workshops to him and every time I thought that it’s very easy and I know everything, Then I discover that I still don’t know anything in grasshopper!

Grasshopper Tutorials¶

First, Grasshopper ‘GH’ is a plugin in Rhinoceros, Also Rhinoceros is an amazing design tool for organic shapes ‘NURBS’. Also, GH includes an amazing plugin that connected with Arduino, processing, Kinect, make a simulation and optimization … else!

These tutorials published n the main website. Grasshopper tutorials, I prefer to learn any software from the original website. There are many books and videos for every plugin.

Also, Food4Rhino is an amazing website that includes all plugins with all versions of all Rhino and Grasshopper plugins.

Design Interactive Media Façade¶

I started in my final project. This is the final product with grasshopper.

via GIPHY

I will explain what I did with Grasshopper

Design Process¶

First, I used ‘ Plane Surface’ to make a surface that can divide with any pattern that I want.
Also, I made it in ‘ XZ plane ‘ to be a Front Elevation.

Then, we need to use ‘Isotrim’ to divide the surface, but it needs a domain with U and V values.

Now we have a surface that divides for every 1 m in U and V. Then we need to make a diagonal shape.

To make a diagonal shape we need to select the four corners points and draw two lines between them.
So, we used ‘Deconstruct Brep’ to select just the Faces, the vertices or the edges.
Then we used ‘List Item’ to specify just one item to be selected, in our case, we need to select the four vertices ‘in order’ in every surface divided.

Then, we use ‘List Item’ to select every four vertices together.
Then draw two lines, from the first and the third point, also the second and the fourth point.
You can see the two green lines between the divide that selected.

This is our point, the diagonal pattern. So we can hide all component and show only the diagonal lines.
Now, we have the pattern ‘from lines’ and the elevation from the surface. So we need to split these lines in the surface.
So we will use ‘Split Surface’. It needs surface and curves. So we will transfer these lines to curves.

Now, we have our panels from a diagonal shape, we can select each one individually by ‘List item’ to control in its rotation.

For ‘Rotate’ the panels we need to select a point and axis that will rotate based on.
Usually, I used the ‘Area’ component that includes in its output the center point of the object. So we selected the point, still need the axis, it will be the ‘ZY Plane’ for each panel.
The last point in rotate, we need to specify the value of rotation with a degree.

‘Color Swatch’ component and ‘Custom Preview’ component to put a color to panels.

We already have the diagonal pattern that rotates with the angle that we need. But we can make a small sample of a building.

We can make it with many ways, first I thought about the main surface that we made in the first step, if we make ‘Move’ in the ‘Y’ direction, that will draw the back elevation only… what if we made ‘Extrude’ in ‘Y’ direction, it will make the five sides.

So I preferred ‘Extrude’. Then ‘Deconstruct Brep’ for the extruded brep to select each ‘Face’ and make thickness for this surface by ‘Offset’ component.

Then we need to select the main surface in the front to ‘Move’ in ‘Y’ direction with distance more than the half of the panel, To get the space for the panels to rotate.
‘List Item’ to select the front surface, and ‘Cull Index’ component to select all items except selected index ‘in our case will be the front surface’.

‘Color Swatch’ and ‘Custom Preview’ to put color.

Move the surface in ‘Y’ direction.

I know it doesn’t show … but know the front surface back to the panels by a distance more than the half of the panel to get space enough to be rotated.

Change colors.

Now, we have the whole object, we can make live animation.

Just select the ‘Slider’ that control in the rotation degree. Right-click … ‘Animate’.

From this tab, we will edit all setting …
First, select the folder that you need to save the image in. From ‘Browse’.
From Frame Templet… you can change the name of the templet that the image will export with.
Viewport tap … we can select the Viewport that we need… for my case, I preferred the perspective.
Then the resolution of the image we can edit it.
Finally, the frame count that control in the count of frames that will be exported. So if when we raised the count up, we will get a smooth animation.
Then, Okay…

These are a random image from Grasshopper through the animation… It’s a real-time animation.

This is the frames or images exported from Grasshopper.

Finally, I used Giphy website to upload my image to make GIF. There are many ways to make GIF, I just google it …

Enjoy!

via GIPHY

Image Sampler with Grasshopper¶

Based on my final project concept to make media interactive facade includes a pattern that division based on an image. This pattern rotates with a specific pattern based on the output of this image.

I don’t know how can I make all of this process … but I feel that I need to learn more about image sampler So I started to search about this point!

References¶

Theses tutorials are very useful … I watched all of them I tried to make something like that