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 of mathematical models, stochastic processes, and game theory in his composition. Xenakis was an important influence on the development of electronic music and he also [...]
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.
University of Washington Digital Design and Fabrication Certificate Program
The University of Washington’s College of Built Environments will be offering a certificate in Digital Design and Fabrication this fall. The certificate program is a three quarter exploration of using digital design tools like Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, and Solidworks in combination with lasercutters, CNC routers, plasma cutters, and 3d printers.
Virtualwind Workflow
Virtualwind is an architect-friendly Computation Fluid Dynamics simulation tool. In a previous post, we briefly outlined the steps involved in setting up a Virtualwind study. This video goes through the entire workflow from start to finish: from cleaning up the geometry in SketchUp to create a watertight model…all the way to visualizing simulation results.
What Would Photoshop Do?
A quick trial of the new “Content Aware” tools in Adobe Photoshop CS5 shows that it’s a fairly smart. This is certainly a huge time saver in production Photoshop work. What’s next for Photoshop? Removing ornament instead of adding it?
Terzidis’ Algorithmic Architecture
Is the algorithm a radically new way of generating form or just another tool for design? Though this presents a false-fork, it does caricature two sides of an imbalanced debate…a debate that Algorithmic Architecture enters into in an odd way. Reviewed: Algorithmic Architecture (2006) by Kostas Terzidis.
Grasshopper Contour Tool
This definition was written to speed up the process of creating a contour model while limiting the amount of waste generated during the fabrication of the physical model. An interface was developed within Grasshopper where all of the important settings can be controlled, allowing those who know little about grasshopper to still use the definition. [...]
Interactive Architecture by Fox & Kemp Reviewed
Interactive Architecture is a monsters compendium of recent work; it is a catalog and survey of current trends. While it has the heft of a textbook, Interactive Architecture is a quick read. If you need a starting point (who doesn’t?), Interactive Architecture is a great one.
AIA Seattle: Parametrics for Sustainability
AIA Seattle is sponsoring a Grasshopper Tech Demo: Parametrics for Sustainability meeting. Part demo, part discussion, this event will feature two Seattle-based firms’ use of an increasingly popular design tool.
Date: May 25, 5:00-6:30 pm
Location: The Miller|Hull Partnership
Cost: Free
Task-Based Interface Presentation Takeaways
LMN recently had the pleasure of presenting a session on customizing the MicroStation V8i task-based interface at Bentley Systems’ 2010 user conference, Be Together. This was a 1 hour presentation in which real-world examples of simple and advanced techniques for modifying task-based interfaces, including creating custom icons, tools, tasks, and named expressions, were presented. Other new features in V8i SELECTseries 1 were also covered, such as Main task customization, workflows and reference tasks.
Surface Patterning with UV Coordinates
Developing a patterned surface can be fairly simple when the surface you are working with is flat, but if you were to develop the same pattern from scratch on a curved surface then things become a little more difficult. Luckily, there is a way to convert a flat pattern to a curve pattern through the [...]
Grasshopper to ANSYS
If you’ve played with Grasshopper then you know how much fun it can be to throw the sliders back and forth and watch your geometry change. What if you wanted to get analysis data for everyone of those iterations? Parametric modeling eases the task of generating multiple iterations, but it can be a bit laborious [...]
Generative Components Speed Ramps
Parking, parking, parking ramps. While not the most glamorous part of a building, parking speed-ramps are one of the most common. Even on a reasonably rectilinear project, parking speed ramps almost always have inner-slopes and outer-slopes, sometimes banking downward or upward as the case may be. Figuring out the slope may not be mathematically difficult, but modeling is tedious, and re-modeling is a waste of time. This is a perfect opportunity to do some scripting.
U of O DIVA Workshop
Rhino Files urbanContext.3dm detailedHouse.dwg Grasshopper Files louver shoebox.gh massing analysis DIVA.gh Resources DIVA for Rhino - This is your goto location for everything related to DIVA. Downloads, tutorials, explanations, etc. Grasshopper Download EnergyPlus Weather Files - You’ll need one of these before you can perform any of the analyses with DIVA (some provided with the DIVA installation). [...]
Grasshopper to Excel Exporter
One of the amazing things about working with Grasshopper is the ability to generate lots of information, a key part of Building Information Modeling. However, it can sometimes be difficult to get that information out of Grasshopper in an organized form. Damien Alomar’s work with GH and Excel served as the initial inspiration for this [...]
Mark Reddington at the UW’s CBE
Last month, Mark Reddington, FAIA, discussed his work as a partner at LMN. Mark spoke in detail about Vancouver Convention Centre West – which served as the media center for the 2010 Winter Olympics – LMN’s history on the UW campus, building PACCAR Hall, home to the Foster School of Business, as well as the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Mark stressed the collaborative aspects of LMN’s work: “Making places and making buildings in not simply an individual effort, but something we all do together…”