Drops

Playing with the 2D Metaball component in Grasshopper. I was curious about why there are no Metaballs in 3D in Grasshopper. Then, I realized that in fact, the 2D Metaball component is creating a section of a 3D Metaball computation. I think it is a topic worth studying even 10 years after this original post to develop an easy way to create the metaball surfaces. In 2012, thanks to the Grasshopper’s easy interface, I was able to create a series…

Differential growth is a process where different parts of a structure grow at different rates, leading to complex forms. After watching this, I decided to try it in Grasshopper. Here, differential growth mimics this behavior by applying rules such as Repulsion to avoid crowding or overlapping, Cohesion to keep parts connected or within a range, and Insertion to add new elements when a part stretches too far. The algorithm I present here simulates a differential growth process starting from a…

In 2016, archi-union architects and fab-union intelligent engineering completed the renovation of the art gallery in Shanghai, China. The distinctive feature of the building was the robotic masonry fabrication of the brick facades. The undulating and waving parametric bricks were increasingly becoming popular after the introduction of parametric design tools such as Grasshopper and the works of Gramazio & Kohler at ETH Zurich since 2008, I guess. I made two Grasshopper experiments in 2012 and 2013 to generate such structures….

Fields is a native group of components available since the very early version of Grasshopper. In today’s Design Computing class, we studied it again with the first-year design students. I studied these interesting and beautiful shapes earlier here, here, here, and here. The one you see below is a short in-class exercise about vector fields. The exercise aims to show the Grasshopper’s capabilities in form-finding studies via Field Lines. The definition starts with the generation of a set of random…

Utilizing “Force Field” components of Grasshopper to show my students how it is easy to develop flexible surfaces in design. The classical parametric canopy design is introduced in this video: In vector calculus, a vector field is an assignment of a vector to each point in a subset of space. A vector field in the plane, for instance, can be visualized as a collection of arrows with a given magnitude and direction each attached to a point in the plane….