Archive for 2010
Objet Alaris30 3D Printer – Update
In a previous post, we promised an update of the Objet Alaris30 3D Printer after we had used it for a couple of months and put it through the paces of a regular production workload. After four months of regular use, there are a number of things we’ve learned…
Happy Holidays from LMN
Happy Holidays from everyone at LMN.
This Holiday Season, we made “Glowflakes” …a hybrid of snowflakes and LED throwies. Glowflakes!
Seattle EUG: ScriptJIGs
I will be presenting at next week’s Seattle Ecotect Users Group meeting. I’ve been asked to speak on the topic of “scripting.” I’ll explain how LMNts has been employing Grasshopper as a sort of “digital script jig” to guide other tools, including Ecotect. Specifically, I’ll present a number of case studies on how analysis data is brought back into our design environments and how/why/when it is used to inform decisions.
Grasshopper Canvas Real Estate
Grasshopper needs more real estate. We’ve been addressing this problem by moving our Grasshopper definitions to a table-top display, tracking an IR LED light pen for interaction on the canvas. The canvas can take up the entire table-top while the linked geometry can be projected on a nearby wall. We’ve only begun setting up the equipment, but our early tests are promising.
Xenakis’ Reynolds House
We recently had the opportunity to produce a physical scale-model of an unbuilt design of Iannis Xenakis. Xenakis was the Greek/French composer, music-theorist, and architect, best known for his use …
ACADIA 2010 NYC
The ACADIA 2010 Conference was held at the Cooper Union and the Pratt Institute in New York/Brooklyn this year. Though the overall theme of this year’s ACADIA was contemporary architecture’s stance between the biological and the technical, I can safely say that this year’s conference was dipped in a theoretical stew. This post highlights a number of interesting works amongst the theoretical background noise.
Objet Alaris30 3D Printer
We have spent our first week with our new Objet Alaris30 3D Printer and it’s an impressive piece of hardware. There are upsides (accuracy and ease-of-use) and downsides (noise, smell), but overall this is a very impressive entry-level 3D printer that is certainly architectural office-friendly. Read on for our first-impressions…
Stage Lighting with LEDs, Arduino, & Firefly
We used 10 high-intensity LEDs to light a 1:24 scale model of a studio theater. The LEDs were wired to an Arduino micro-controller and programmed using the Firefly components for Grasshopper. All 10 LEDs can be individually controlled from a Grasshopper definition or wired together (in GH) to form banks of lights. The result is a computer-controlled mini theatrical lighting system on the cheap.
A Breathing Building Skin at ACADIA 2010
Scott will be presenting “A Breathing Building Skin” at the ACADIA 2010 Conference at Cooper Union in New York, taking place October 21st – 24th. The theme of the conference this year is “the changing nature of information and its impact on architectural education, research and practice,” with a focus on the roles of information in the design process, generative and evolutionary modeling, and digital fabrication.
Sightlines and View Obstructions
This Grasshopper definition takes any potential point of view and simulates a spectator’s quality of view based upon what areas on the stage would be blocked from view.