Continued Manipulation

After last week and manipulating the surface from the guitar, I decided to go back and explore the effects of melting on the form.  Though last week I explored how melting effected the geometry, I did not include that deformation in the final print.  With that in mind I wanted to try and see what further manipulation I could achieve by including melting in the final form.

As I explored this further, I discovered that by rotating the axis of the melt modifier, I was able to achieve a completely different effect on the geometry.

I became particularly interested in the way that the geometry collapsed on itself.  I was careful to ensure that the geometry did not hit the "ground" as part of this manipulation.  Happy with the results of the melt, I decided to go back in the stack of this form to see if there were any earlier modifiers that if changed would have an interesting effect.  Looking back, I discovered that changing the twist that was applied earlier in the forms development has a particularly interesting effect on the new melt.  You will notice that this geometry and its thickness is a lot smoother than last week.  During this new process, I discovered that the melt ended up pulling along the normals of several quads.  This resulted in the folding of these quads, creating bad geometry.  To counteract this, I applied a smooth modifier as the final operation in the stack.

3d Printing

As a result of the surface manipulation grid that i performed, I was particular interested in the combination of twisting and rippling the geometry of the guitar.  The resulting surface:

A concern I have is the pocket in the surface that has been developed and getting powder out of it.  As this surface developed, I wanted to make sure to maintain the original seems of the guitar corner.  These seams help to give variation in the surface.  Another thing I was particularly interesting is the effect of melting on this surface.  As I explored this effect, I was surprised to see how well the geometry held up to the modification.

Surface Manipulation

As I began to explore the surface of the guitar, I decided to manipulate one of the corners of the guitar.  I chose this piece in particular due to the fact that this is where many different surfaces and curves come together.  Using this as my base, I ran the geometry through a series of manipulations.  I was particular interesting in twisting, bending, rippling, scaling, and bloating this geometry.  Using 3ds Max, I found the stack modifier particular useful for this exercise.  I was able to explore multiple transformations on the same geometry in a non-destructive process.  Always able to go back to the original geometry if needed.  

I set these series of 4 transformations as part of a grid system.  The base being the center of this grid, and using a morpher  modifier to see how different percentages of two different transformations interacted with one another.  As a rule of thumb for myself, I took each transformation to the point just before the geometry began to tear.  

Versioning

"'Versioning' is an operative term meant  to describe a recent, significant shift in the way architects and designers are using technology to expand, in time as well as in territory, the potential effects of design in our world.  More importantly I find, however, is the idea of iteration.  The fact that with new progress in technology, we have the ability to not only explore new forms, but generate iterations of these forms extremely quickly.  The example was given of the development of the many different types of Fins and Rudders.  A beneficial act to see and compare several different ideas side by side.  However, extremely time consuming.  Technology has allowed us to stream line this process, using pre-defined conditions to generate increasingly different forms.  In a sense an excel sheet for form/ design.  Not only has this technology allowed use to generate this iterations infinitely quicker, it has also allowed us to explore multiple influences at the same time, rather than a linear process.

The question was brought up, and something that I personally wonder, is with this increase in technology, what use are we as designers if a computer is able to generate so many so quickly.  "This is not a call to replace the human act of design with algorithms, but a critical search for a common language between design and execution."  The idea that this iteration is simply a tool for design.  Allowing the designer to explore extremely large variations of a particular design, and to explore conditions normally unobtainable without technology.  Remembering back to the lecture we had a couple weeks ago regarding NADAA.  They were able to use a series of animations to quickly explore a wall form.  I believe that this approach is exactly the strength of this technology.  Empowering the designer to iterate quickly and explore hundreds of possibilities.

There have been ideas of the development of this technology even further to a point where actual floor plans/ construction documents would be able to be seamlessly developed and iterated on.  If such a process was to become streamlined, and as architects, what role would we be able to play?  Will a computer ever really be able to make design decisions?  Is this something we should be scared of, or perhaps open to adapt too?