gPlanks

Planks for Rhino Grasshopper

A planking path discribes the path a linear stip of material would take when laid out over any form. It assumes that the material of the plank can bend and twist but has a high sheer resistance. Once the start point and direction is defined the plank path is set.

On conical formes the plank path is also a geodesic line.

gPlanks is a geometric algorithem that works by setpping in alternating Pythagorean triangals along a given mesh. Each plank starts by finding the closest point on a mesh to a given start point. The start direction is set by the cross product of a given direction vector and the normal of the start point mesh. In the current version it cuts strips short when reaching an edge or sharp corner. I might throw an error when calculation a normal that is collinear to the direction vector. Version 0.24 was developed and tested in Grasshopper 0.90052

gPlanks version 0.24

A mechanical representation of the algorithm is available at Shapeways