Computational Fabrication: 2.5D Ornament Printing

This tutorial is about how to make 2.5D-printable ornamental grid object with Rhino6 and Grasshopper.

An example of it shown above.

SOFTWARE USED:

1. Rhino6

2. Ultimaker CURA

From Rhino6 command box, "Grasshopper" is opened.

A. The inputs points p1 and p2 are defined(and the connection was made from grasshopper to rhino) and fed into the python function.

B. The "mod", "mtype" and "list" inputs as on the circuit above are adjusted on the number slider to get the desired pattern.

C. The points are displayed and the curve is fed into the offsetCrv function(i.e. used to offset and cap the ends) and tuned using another "Distance" input parameter.

D. It is further passed into the "Boundary" function(i.e. used to create planar surfaces from a collection of boundary edge curves)

E. Finally it is extruded with the desired height along z axis for the pattern existing on XY plane(which is of 0 thickness) and baked from grasshopper.

In Rhino, desired walls/surfaces are selected(by pressing on Shift+clicking on required walls/surfaces) and they are aggregated by boolean union function.

The desired pattern is hence exported as ".stl"(Stereolithography file format as it readable by CURA) from "File->Export Selected.." option.

The stl file is opened in CURA software and sliced to know the time it would take to print on a 3d Printer.

• Once Boolean Union was done on Rhino, I could not undo from the available options(as can be seen in the above image)
• Rhino crashes on changing perspective on M1 MacBook Air
• Changing the parameters randomly to get the closest pattern seemed to be ambiguous reinforcing the point that due to randomness and generatively, the role of designer seldom becomes ambiguous. I could not get the exact pattern I aimed for.