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Coral pattern/shape on 3D-Objekts
nic_r
Member Posts: 9 ✭
Hello,
I would like to do some projects with a coral design (see attached screenshots).
is it somehow possible to make a coral pattern/shape in Onshape?
These kind of patterns are not really possible if I would sketch it and extrude/remove it on such 3D surfaces.
Is it possible in onshape to use a feature that calculates such things?
Thank you in advanced.
Cheers,
Nic
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Answers
These are most likely created using a Voronoi lattice in some generative design tool. It's not really practical to do this via a 2D sketch and extrude, at least not with all the variations and controls that are possible with a generative tool.
Yeah looks like a Voronoi Effekt and not made via 2D sketch. So is there a option in Onshape to make this somehow possible?
If not, is it planned in a future implementation?
A voronoi pattern is the sort of thing that might be best done with FeatureScript. Voronoi will require some sort of seeds or reference points to create the shapes around. A lot of voronoi generators for CAD modeling use random points as the seeds. FeatureScript doesn't like to generate random numbers, but it is possible to generate pseudo-random numbers.
@evanreese wrote an Attractor Pattern script which will use points to vary size or other attributes of a pattern of shapes. Some of that code might be a good reference for starting a voronoi FS.
Hi S1mon,
thank you for that hint about the Attractor Pattern, could really use it for some other things in the future.
So I see, saldy there is actual no such thing to do a voronoi style in onshape.
I´m also not able to adapt the Attractor Feature Script, to change the grid type in way, so they are not intersect each other. The second thing of course to have different random shapes.
But Thanks.
Cheers,
Nic
3D Sculpting software will do this…..Meshmixer or zBrush etc but they will export as STL or OBJ so won't be parametric in CAD world
@nic_r can you share a screenshot of your challenge with Attractor Pattern? I know it doesn't handle continuous surfaces like a cylinder well, and I hope to fix that soon.
About voronoi patterns: I'll add that these patterns don't just have pseudo-random points at the cell centers. The points are also culled in some way so that points don't "randomly" end up too close together and make awkwardly shaped cells. I've considered taking a run at coding it up, but I don't see a path to it that's not a very big code investment (for me anyway), and voronoi as an aesthetic feels dated/overused to my industrial design brain, so I've not been motivated enough. Definitely just a personal opinion though.
You might be able to work around this a bit at least by using an online voroni generator, converting the svg to a dxf and importing that to a sketch for further modeling with the Extrude and Wrap tools. It's certainly a clunky solution, but ought to work.
Yeah thanks, I found already a service like:
https://www.voronator.com
But the result in the end… still need to adapt something and that´s not possible after that as you mentioned.
@EvanReese thank you for your help. I already tried what you mentioned a external Voronator service, but it´s not really like i want it to be. So at the moment I´m working on a project like the lampshade on my first screenshot from the 07.Jan comment (Coral-1.png).
Could you maybe please send me a private message with your email, so I can share my project with you. Maybe it´s easier that way than a screenshot. You can also edit then how you like, because it´s just a test-project.
you can share your project link here if you want more eyes on it for additional input. but you could do that pattern on a cylindrical shape (cup style) using the wrap feature. doing it on spherical or complex curves won't work with the wrap feature though.
I thought of a partial hacky solution actually! Since voronoi patterns are very related to the intersection of circles (or spheres for 3D ones) I used Attractor Pattern to cut a bunch of spheres into my main shape, then Project Curve to project those edges back onto my base surface like this. From there I'm not sure the best way to thicken each wire, but the thing that comes to mind is a simple custom feature to sweep a circle on each curve. I don't have time at the moment to draft that, but it could be quite simple. Hopefully this gets you started.
I wrote a simple feature to convert the curves to swept pipes. This could be exported as a single stl and printed if you want to. Getting it to blend together organically would be quite tough with this workflow. There are definitely other tools that are more purpose-built for this kind of thing (I'd use Rhino and Grasshopper), but Onshape could probably be made to do it with some dedicated coding