Of course, all dimensional properties like height, radius, fold width and wall thickness can be adjusted – just like in a normal parametric software. The pleasing insight in this experiment was that more complex properties of an object, the amount of folds in this case, can be parameterised with nearly the same ease. Not that this wouldn´t be possible in a typical parametric software like SolidWorks or Catia, but here operations like these become much harder than simple dimesional changes or the manipulation of a single program feature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Grasshopper definition behind this picture is pretty simple. It generates random sized boxes on a two-dimensional grid and turns them towards the centre. Additionally, the boxes are moved downwards according to their distance to the centre to create the hole for the dramatic light source.

Another way to create nice dot patters is to use attractor objects that influence the size of each dot in a grid. In the picture below the distance of each dot to a curve determines its size – the closer the distance, the larger a dot.

Patterns can also be arranged along a curve, another simple dot pattern in this case:

The system is based on a spine curve and a ring of leaves that are modeled in Rhino and referenced in the Grasshopper definition. The spine curve can be manipulated directly with its control points. The definition creates a defined amount of copies of the leaf element along the spine curve and offers elements to manipulate them additionally, like scaling and rotating.

For everybody who is interrested, the definition and the Rhino file can be found here (look down in the comments).

I was asked already several times by people who wanted to have an stl file or directly a copy of one of these objects. I made these things available online for a very reasonable price over at Shapeways…