Parquet Deformations add-on

This is my first experiment on developing add-ons for Grasshopper. There are two components in the “Parquet Deformations” add-on. These are the ghuser files coded in Python. So, they can work by just dragging and dropping to the Grasshopper canvas. These first two components of the toolset are more like helpers while designing Parquet Deformations. I introduced some of my re-generations of classical parquet deformations here and here and in a book chapter here.

The Loft Component of Parquet Deformations add-on

While modeling the Parquet Deformations, I came across two problems. In the toolset, I tried to create solutions for them. The first problem was about the regular Loft component in Grasshopper. The “Loft Aligned” component’s functionality and difference from a standard surface modeling command, especially in protrusions. The object on the left of the below image is the result of a standard Loft operation in Rhinoceros. Since the command does not have enough information about the general shape-shifting style of parquet deformations, it adds edges along the surface to match. The object on the right is the result of my “Loft Aligned” component. This component calculates naked and overlapping vertices and generates new edges according to the general rule of orthogonal foldings in parquet deformations. You can see the difference in the below image:

The Symmetry Component

It looks simple but it is a life-saver while designing the parquet deformations via morphing prototiles. The second component is “p31m”. You can find it under the component group named Symmetry. This component helps designers to explore not only parquet deformations but many pattern systems by enabling the application of symmetry groups. Currently, I could only develop one symmetry group called p31m for testing purposes. I coded it as a native Grasshopper cluster, which means it is still in the development phase. It takes geometric objects to be transformed, and two points to determine the size of the hexagonal lattice of the symmetry transformation. In the below image, you can see what it does:

I organized the inputs of p31m to match the outputs of the Loft Aligned component. So that I can establish an efficient parquet deformation modeling workflow quickly. In the future, I am planning to add the other symmetry groups into the add-on.