Parametric WikiHouse: Grasshopper

[Charlie]

I've been working in grasshopper to see if I can automate my process a little. Made my first attempt at the solid section which a friend helped me clean up.

I've attached the current scripts if anyone wants to play around with them. The Fin Generator is a mess and needs plenty of work but it copies fins at a specified distance. The next step would be to set the system to the grid and allow it to create the connection parts which are a little more standardised than the fins. The fin linework is made of pre-drawn curves (which I did in Autocad) which isn't perfect. Assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Hopefully other people in the community with greater skill can pick it up and take it somewhere. Not sure if grasshopper can be used as a parametric web interface for WikiHouse and as it relies on Rhino it's not exactly free. Have a look at openlinework.blogspot.co.uk for a few extra pics and details of my process.

Cheers,

Charlie

[Charlie]

Some people have got in touch saying it would be a lot less processor-intensive if curves were used not solids. Even better would be vectors and number editing then adding curves or solids right at the end as an optional preview. I'll try this out at the weekend. Ben has done more to the solid section script in the last few days and added the s-joint  manipulation sliders too. It's not quite right yet though and I'll post when we have it working as needed.

This dogbone script created by Noah Z Brock might be a useful addition to the WikiHouse profile too. It adds a dogbone to any right-angle and you can specify the router bit.

Cheers!

[Evan Thomas]

Hi Charlie, 

Looks like awesome work you've put into exploring the notions of parametrics within the Wikihouse context. From what we can see there are some parallels running between what we at Made on Jupiter have been exploring with the New Zealand Wikihouse team, and your workstream of automating the digital process.

If you have a spare moment for a meet and greet and would like to have a chat over implementing a parametric workflow, let us know. We are not using grasshopper as such, but rather an online tool (www.spokecreator.com) which the team here has been developing but it uses similar logic and workflows to achieve the final result.

Anyways, awesome to see the parametric side picking up! Best form of contact to arrange a skype chat (?) would be through email: ev...@madeonjupiter.com

Cheers 

[Michael Clarke]

Hi Evan and Charlie,

Looks really interesting guys. I'm a student in the UK who looked at WikiHouse as part of my architecture postgraduate degree. I have since graduated but for most of last year spent my time using grasshopper to look at CNC milled structures for open source construction. I'm very keen to get involved in the WikiHouse attempts to add a parametric workflow option to the system and would love to help any way I can. I haven't had a chance to look through your work yet Charlie but will certainly download it when I can, sounds great.

I got the email from the group looking at the possibility of replicating the Wikihouse v.3.1 in Spokecreator. This looks amazing, one of the biggest difficulties in designing a parametric open source construction set is the availability of tools such as grasshopper, what with Rhino not being free. I'll work through the tutorials you guys have posted Evan for SpokeCreator and then see if I can come up with anything. I think this could lead to a lot of different options especially building off the first attempt that you published in the public spokes domain. I'm not in a position to comment now, having not yet done the tutorials but is it possible to define profile shapes rather than number of roof points? I think this would be easier for people to control the final form, if the wikihouse structure is simply a series of replicated structural members. This may be something you are already doing but it will be fun to play around with anyway. 

Good luck with it all and I look forward to seeing future developments,

Mike

[Michael Clarke]

My apologies, just seen that the profile can be edited very easily. No worries