Parametric Bench (Grasshopper Tutorial)
For this week’s assignment, I followed the tutorial that I found online and tried to make the custom shape.
I started by creating one curve and three shapes as the rail and sections of the sweep, and then made a sweep in Grasshopper. However, I encountered some difficulties at this step. The shape was unexpectedly flipped and distorted, and I had to try many methods to debug the issue. Ultimately, I used the Flip Plane function and boolean toggle to flip the plane, and found that the distortion was due to my incorrect choice of sections and points sequence.
Once I fixed the issues with the sweep function, I proceeded to play around with the shape and make it more organic. I then used the Perp Frames function to generate equally spaced frames along the curve and extruded them to create thickness.
the final outcome!
However, I found that the thickness of the shapes was not consistent, and the shape at the two ends had no thickness, which was not suitable for 3D printing. After a long time debugging, I discovered that my points set for the three shapes were not at the center of the shape, which caused the uneven thickness distribution.
I left some space at the bottom when I created the shape - in theory I should generate support, but I really hate support (too hard to take them down and too ugly, especially if it is supported on top of the fabric I feel like it’s almost impossible to remove them), and since my object is not that big and it’s an arch-like shape, I decided to risk not to generate support. Surprisingly it turned out pretty well!
the first 3 layers printing
pause and add fabric.
The fabric did not well stick onto the plate with the 3M glue, so I ended up using tape to stabilize it.
removed from the printer
removed the Brim
yay