#rhinoceros

Today’s design computing class was about fractals. In Rhino, writing macro statements are very easy to learn as it just mimics your behaviors in a sequential text. There are a few syntactic rules that we should know. First, you should watch the command line carefully to understand the steps of your design process. Each command in Rhino requires different inputs from the user. In macro, you may enter these values or tell the macro to ask the user by typing…

Can we go back to the beginnings of algorithmic design tools, when it was still as simple as possible (not to the binary level of course)? Most of the theorists agree about the fact that contemporary parametric design tools sometimes provide needlessly many possibilities that suppress the designer’s own creativity. The Voronoi component in Grasshopper was one of the cult examples of that (mentioned here). Throughout this blog, I always search for simple and powerful definitions to design problems, without…

These are examples of 2.5D exercises in the design geometry course in my freshman year of architecture. We asked students to create extruded or referenced solids referenced from their previous exercise of pattern deformations, (examples are here and here). We also started to inject some of the most used concepts of design computing here, by perceiving each tessellation cell as the variation of a predefined algorithm, such as a relationship with an attractor object (a distance value with a point)….

Last year, I posted a way to create a Grasshopper command button in Rhino 4 (here). As the scripting possibilities increase in Rhino 5, the new tab feature can be used to put them together. I’ve made 4 of the most used platforms in a tab named “Scripting”. Here is how I did it; Use right-click on the empty area to open the above menu and select “new tab” to create an empty tab, naming it “Scripting. Right-click on the…

In this exercise, we asked students to develop a method to produce custom tessellations. This is based on the analysis of what is called “Islamic patterns”. We have discussed Eric Brough‘s famous book “Islamic Geometric Patterns”, regarding geometric relationships and linear connectivities via underlying tessellations (such as regular square and hexagonal). Thus, this geometry and drawing exercise is called “Seamless Patterns” in the Design Geometry course at İstanbul Bilgi University. We gave the following recipe to enable the exploration: Lately,…

The first-year Architectural Geometry course includes Euclidean constructions as a study of associative geometry. We have exercised the below questions to study this topic. These are three mutually tangent circles, that can be drawn using only a compass and ruler, without built-in tangency functions in Rhino. Such exercises are expected to improve students’ reasoning. We believe architectural geometry education should encourage a conception that allows students to think about what they are doing and control their process, rather than just…

Last week, the first-year architectural geometry course was about pattern deformations. Students are expected to familiarize themselves with 2d drawing, transformation, and control point editing commands while trying to design a deformation. After studying regular and semi-regular tessellations of the plane, they are expected to develop reasoning on the rule-based and iterative processes. This also constructed an underpinning for Basic Design’s “Metamorphosis” study, where they have discussed more conceptual frameworks derived from such systems. Below are some of the results…

This is not to explain the method of the Parquet Deformation but to see the potential. After we’ve studied regular, semi-regular, dual, and truncated tessellations with students, the Architectural Geometry course expects them to develop a Parquet Deformation handmade such as those shown below. I call them Parquet Deformation handmade. Because they are manually designed but drawn using traditional CAD. The samples you see below are from this website. It is a good source for other topics of tessellation as well….

The poincare disk is still an interesting representation of hyperbolic space for me, full of mysteries. I’ve had several attempts to understand it previously (here and here). Finally, I found a resource* explaining basic concepts about it. I tried to repeat some of the constructions in Rhinoceros, (without any logical purpose). The most important part is the conversion of a Euclidean point into a hyperbolic space. There is no clear formula, for directly projecting a point into Hyperbolic space, but…

The Truncated Icosahedron (5,6,6) is an Archimedean Solid we often recognize as the iconic soccer ball. This geometric structure, also affectionately known as the “Buckyball” in honor of the visionary architect Buckminster Fuller, has gained significant popularity and recognition both within the realms of mathematics and everyday life. It is composed of twelve regular pentagons and twenty regular hexagons, meticulously arranged to achieve a harmonious balance. This symmetrical nature makes it a fascinating object of study in geometry and various…