Latest

Saturday, April 4, 2009

The basics of Paneling Tools


Learn the basics of using the Paneling Tools plugin for Rhino. You can download and try Paneling Tools through the main wiki page on the plugin.
http://en.wiki.mcneel.com/default.aspx/McNeel/PanelingTools.html

2 comments:

JamesMHarrison said...

Thanks- these tutorials are very helpful.

You mentioned you plan to go into more depth on paneling. I've wondered if there are ways to cover a given shape with irregular quadrangles? I.E, irregular faceting?
Imagine taking a sphere, and randomly sanding flat patches onto it, and that is the effect I'm aiming for. Thanks for any suggestions.

Brian James said...

Hi James,
Yes, I think that it is possible to make irregular flat quads on a sphere. Manipulation of the point grid with something like "SoftMove" and then using pullback or project to get the points on the sphere again might work for you. The rows of panels will need to stay linear however if they must remain flat. as soon as you have a twisting grid on a spherical surface the panels will no longer be flat when made with four sides. If you use triangular shaped panels and choose flat faces only, you can have a twisting grid while maintaining flatness. There is also a command called "ptPanelRandomPoints" that can be used, although these will always be three sided.

One last approach would be to use Grasshopper... but that's a different topic.

Thanks for the feedback,