Algorithmic sketchbook by Yuchen Ye

AIR ALGORITHMIC SKETCHBOOK

2015, SEMESTER 1, ALESSANDRO LIUTI YUCHEN YE

Table of Contents Week1

4-5

Week2 6-7 Week3 8-9 Week4 10-11 Week5 12-

Week 1 Task_Vase Design

WEEK 1 TASK

Method 1 First week's task is about learning grasshopper, experimenting its principle and basic functions. Because grass hopper is a plug-in for Rhino, and I'm quite familiar with Rhino, the first task was not so hard for me. However, there are so much content in grasshopper that I can not find the right function I want, which takes a lot of time during the modeling process.

Our first task is make vase in grasshopper. For the first method, I just used made 3 circles and the loft function to create a vase. I can adjust the scale of these circles and move them around to create different vases.

Method 2 Method 2 I was still using 3 circles but I was able to adjust the plan these circles were drawn. The direction of the vase changes through the movement of the circles.

Method 3 In method 3, instead of only use circles, I used polygons to loft my vase. I was able to change the number of sides of these polygons to create variations in these vases. However, in some situation grasshopper was not able to loft because the number of sides are different and it can not match each one of them to another.

Method 4 In method 4, I mixed using circle and polygons along a curve to loft my vase. All vases are in similar shape but totally different rythem.

Method 5 For the last method, I drew 3 curves and loft them together, which I think is the most interesting one. Because it shows how flexible grasshopper can do and I think the shapes it created is very interesting as well.

Week 2 Task_Pavilion Design

For this week's task, I used the surface box command to generate panels to clayd my pavilion. So I decided to start with my panel design, which is going to be a pyramidal shape pattern but hollow at the top. For this pattern, I used loft command and reference it into the surface box command.

I have done similar design in Rhino before using the "Panneling Tool" command which is kind similar. While design the same thing in grasshopper, I found that visually, grasshopper communicates better than Rhino direct desgin and the flow of design is much clear which is amazing. I can easily adjust the value of any component and change the patterns, meanwhile it's very hard and complicated to do the same thing in Rhino.

Then I started to design the form of this Pavillion starting with dividing a line into points. Then draw circles on each points and use the loft command to generate a surface.

Then I used the "attracter point" concept in grasshopper using the distence command and the evaluate curve command to change the radius of each circle. As the point move along the curve, the form of the pavilion changes, so does the patterns

WEEK 3 TASK_PATTERN CREATION

For this task, we were asked to use the cull function to create pattern made up of circles. Firstly we create a point gride which can be matched with the pattern we have got. Then we use the cull function to transform black and white images to circular patterns which express and redefine the image in a different manner.

This task is all about practicing and understanding the cross-referencing command in grasshopper. It is a very powerful command as it does allow us to arrange some complex data and match them properly in the way we want.

WEEK 4 TASK_MATHS AND PATTERN

Playing with mathmatics and how patterns can be created through visual expression. I created this 3D flowerly pattern by multiplying and rotation at a fixed point.

Then I used sin and cos to create pattern on 2D surface. I was able to change its form by changing the number of points on linear array. It was so beautiful just looking at the pattern it created.

Then added value for z axis and I notice that the pattern I created were actually lines that grows with certain arrangement.

WEEK 5 TASK_SPIDERWEB

This is the first time I use Kangaroo plugin. It is a very powerful plugin and I found that the process of making this spiderweb is even more complex. I had some issue with changing the lines into springs as I explode the how pattern into small lines. However I still managed to create this amazing spiderweb,

Reengineer the Seroussi Pavillon by using kangaroo plugin is quite interesting as it take a different approch from the graoph mapper command. It is a different stratigy and it still works fine.