Additive Stereotomy

Additive Stereotomy is a proposal by Maurizio Barberio and Micaela Colella of Barberio Colella ARC, developed with the support of Diederik Veenendaal of Summum Engineering.

The overall concept is to cover a large, open space by a series of adjacent arches. Under permanent load, the arches are thought to be statically independent to form a sort of false vault. By using Grasshopper, Summum Engineering determined the shape of the arches and volume fraction of the voussoirs to achieve constant stress, as well as the amount of prestress to keep them in compression under external load. Material properties are based on the 3D printing technology provided by Concr3de and were used in plugin Karamba3d to check the arches for several load combinations. Each voussoir is topologically optimized in 2D to achieve a volume fraction specific to its position in the arch, to achieve constant stress, yet with a visually similar sizing.

More information...

Bongo 3 WIP now available

Bongo 2.0 users are encouraged to download and try this WIP release of the animation plugin for Rhino 6, Bongo 3.0.

New features include:

• Integration with Bullet physics for rigid and softbody simulation
• New expressions properties for physics parameters
• Improved IK system named Connections
• Bongo gumball for simpler keyframing of objects

Bongo 3.0 WIP 3 is now available from here.

Rhino at the Dzaleka Refugee Camp

Dzaleka Refugee Camp is situated in one of the poorest countries in the world - Malawi. It has existed for over 25 years and hosts about 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers.

A Burundian refugee, Remy Gakwaya, is a self-taught computer programmer. He rented a tiny room in the camp and with one computer started to teach computer programming skills. Later, they assembled a 3D printer, learned Rhinoceros and they are now sharing these skills with others in the camp. When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, they immediately began designing and developing 3D-printed protective essentials such as face masks, face shields, and equipment for aid-workers or hospitals. 

Learn more about the project here... 

Support the crowdfunding campaign...

Online Training in Russian language: Rhino in Architecture

Online training in Russian: Rhino in Architecture
Starting date: May 26, 2020
Duration: 8 sessions of 120 minutes each

Sabit Software will deliver this online training in the Russian language. The course is designed for students, beginners, experienced architects, and anyone who wants to gain or improve their professional skills in architectural modeling in Rhinoceros.

Registration...

RhinoResurf 3.3 for Rhino 6 has been released

Unfold 3D mesh in to 2D Mesh

RhinoResurf 3.3 for Rhino 6 has been released recently. In this version some known bugs have been fixed. Some new features and tutorials have been added;

• Unfold 3D mesh into 2D mesh.
• Method for quickly converting cylindrical topology mesh surface into smooth NURBS surface.

RhinoResurf for Rhino is a reverse engineering plugin. This plugin gives Rhino the ability to reconstruct the geometry represented by a NURBS surface of an object from a mesh or point cloud which describes it.

• More details about RhinoResurf.
• Try RhinoResurf V3.3 for Rhino 6.

Mindesk introduces IRIS at Volkswagen Group event "Future Technology for Car Design"

April 16, 2020 - "Future Technology for Car Design" is an event organized by T-System for Volkswagen which gathers the latest innovations in the automotive design industry.

A selection of Volkswagen's Tier-1 Partners including Mindesk (a Vection Technology company), McNeel & Associates, T-System, Epic Games, Varjo, and Logitech, presented their latest technological updates. 

CEO Gabriele Sorrento and Computational Designer Arturo Tedeschi introduced Iris, an original concept for an electric city car. Arturo Tedeschi further shared details about how Mindesk Live Link with VR and Unreal opens an unprecedented approach to parametric design.

Read the complete story here...

Pufferfish V2.9

The Pufferfish is one of few animals which is capable of changing its shape.

This plugin is a set of 318 components which focuses on Tweens, Blends, Morphs, Averages, Transformations, and Interpolations - essentially Shape Changing.

Pufferfish V2.9 update adds 13 new components. Most notably components for Averaging / Tweening Transforms. A new Rhino 7 WIP Mirror Cut SubD component. New falloff options for Pinch'n'Spread are available. Average / Tween Mesh components can now use colored meshes. Various other component updates and optimizations are included.

Download Pufferfish on food4Rhino...

xNURBS Rhino plugin V4 released

Edit and rebuild a xNURBS surface.

Now available: xNURBS Version 4. Existing xNURBS customers get a free update to V4.X. Version 4 includes many enhancements, such as producing better surfacing quality, editing an xNURBS surface, and achieving smaller tangent deviation (less than 0.04 degree), etc. 

Why xNURBS? Key features are:

• Unlimited capacities for solving NURBS: Its optimization algorithm can solve virtually any NURBS surface in a matter of milliseconds (regardless of how complex the constraints are).


• High-quality surfaces. For a given set of constraints, xNURBS’ optimization algorithm uses an energy-minimization method to generate the smoothest NURBS surface among all possible solutions. The generated surface quality is outstanding.


• xNURBS is one super powerful NURBS tool that fixes virtually all surfacing issues for existing CAD software.


• Easy-to-use. It uses one simple UI for all kinds of NURBS modeling.


• Super robust. xNURBS is rock solid and works flawlessly.


• Native CAD surfaces. xNURBS is based on NURBS, i.e., the native CAD surfaces, which can be directly used for any CAD modeling operations without any geometry translation.

Details on food4Rhino...