A hexagonal truchet pattern that I made for MAT238 at UCSB

Supplies

Cardboard, Laser Cutter, Rhino, Grasshopper

Step 1: Create Hexagonal Grid/draw Lines

The steps to draw this pattern: find the center of one of the hexagons in the grid and randomly connect the midpoints of the edges of the hexagons in pairs. This is accomplished with a Python script in Grasshopper using the rhinoscriptsyntax API

Step 2: Expand the Curves With Grasshopper Nodes

This show the output of the Python node going into to Offset Curve nodes, one positive offset , one negative offset. That goes into an Extend Curve Utility set to a negative amount. The Extend Curve node makes sure the path doesn't make any cutouts in the material. The output of these two shortened curves then went into a Ruled Surface node which draws a surface between two curves. This surface was then output into a curve object and baked.

Step 3: Processing for Cut

This step included brining the file into Adobe Illustrator and making changes for the particular laser cutter and the software that interfaces with it.

Step 4: Result

Step 5: With Interpolated Curves

This is the code to draw three point curves instead of straight lines using the Rhino.Geometry API. Notice the call to Grasshopper Environment to get Volatile Data. This method was provided by chatGPT and may be not the ideal way to implement the Rhino.Geometry API in grasshopper. The interpolated curves use a third point that is halfway between the midpoint of the midpoint pair and the center. The output uses the same grasshopper node network to expand the curves.