Week06

3D designing & printing - Lattice structure

I decided to print a lattice structure, which consists of a grid made up for nodes and repeating geometries. These structures are commonly found in nature and provide for a unique, stronge and efficient structures such as in bones.

To do this I downloaded the Intralattice plug-in in Rhino. Which is one of a handful of plug-in designed to help make Lattice structures.

The program has a default command - Cell/ Present Cell - that designs lattice structures with a list of starting cell types ie. gird, diamond, honeycomb etc…

I wanted to set my Dodecahedron as my starting cell and have the lattice grow from it. To do this I had to use the custom command - Cell/ Custom Cell. Where I have to first set my custom cell to a geometry in my case the Dodecahedron I had modeled in previous weeks.

After the geometry is set to the custom cell. I have to chose the kind of grid that my Lattice will follow.

There are many types ie, a basic cartigen grid, a sphere, a cylinder, or any other custom form. It was interesting to see through my research how Lattices are used in shoe design, for example the sole of the shoe.

I chose a simple cartigen grid lattice structure that my Dodecahedron can follow. This is done through the basic box component. After connecting the output from the custom cell topology, to the topology of the basic box. Then you add two number sliders that can control the size of the cell and the number of its repetitions along the X, Y and Z axis.

After achieving the basic Lattice structure. We now need to define the volume of the geometry so it can be converted into a printable mesh. I did this by a useful component multipipe which requires you go back and set the curves in the geometry. Two sliders are added to control the thickness/ radius of the pipes etc…

After this step I can easily adjust the Lattice through the number sliders. Adjusting overall size, radius of the pipes and dimension of the lattice. I then baked the preferred lattice, then converted the form into a mesh for printing.

3D SCANNING & FIXING MESH ON BLENDER

I used scaniverse to scan an object. First I scanned a coffee mug but due to the reflection and poor scanning technique I had a lot of holes in the cup. I did not bother to fix it.

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Second, I scanned a small 4 faced sculpture that sat on my desk. Although the object is metallic and has some reflection, the scan turned out relatively well on the app. When I moved it into the blender, my definition was significantly worse.

I looked at some tutorials on how to refine the form using the sculpting tools. I would need much more time on this to get good results so I just played around.