P Lamp Assignment

P Lamp

Using the paneling tools in rhino design a shade for a table lamp.

PanelingTools helps generate 2D and 3D cellular patterns and populate them over gridded surfaces. Therefore you will be designing both the cell and the gridded surface. You may design the cell in revit, modo or rhino. The gridded surface you will be designing in rhino and you will be using the paneling tools plugin in rhino to populate your cell across the surface (lamp shade) that you have designed. You may then export your lamp to modo or revit for rendering.

Start by going to http://i.materialise.com/Tool/CreateYourOwnLamp and download the starter kit for rhino and read the “how to design” instructions.

Open the starter kit in rhino, create a new layer named “p shade” and start designing your shade by drawing curves, circles and/ or elipses and lofting them to create a surface. Make sure to allow for a 2.4” spherical zone around the light bulb itself.

Lofting tips:

In order to successfully loft in Rhino you should be consistent about the geometry you use, for example, if you want to create a closed lamp you may use circles and/ or elipses and you may use them together. If you want your shade to be composed of an open surface or collection of surfaces use the control point curve. If you use the control point curve make sure your curves are all built with the normals going in the same direction and each curve has the same number of points.

The second step will be to model a cell to apply to the lofted “p shade” surface that you have designed. You may design the cell in rhino, modo, or revit. The cell should be a simple form that in some way allows for the passage of light.

Import the cell you have designed into rhino. Follow the steps below to place the cell on your lofted surface.

1. Select the paneling tool pointgridsurface domain. This command will allow you to place a grid of points over the lofted surface you have designed. These vertices will determine the placement and dimensions of the cells as they are distributed across the lofted surface.

2. Select the paneling tool offsetpoints. This command will allow you to determine the thickness of the cell as it is placed on the surface.

3. Select the paneling tool panel3Dcustom. This command will allow you to actually select the point grids and the cell that you have imported and place it on the lofted surface.

There are numerous paneling tools that you can experiment with beyond the ones described above. There is also a paneling tools manual and many tutorials at http://wiki.mcneel.com/labs/panelingtools if you need additional help or would like to further your knowledge of this plugin.

Ultimately, you will be exporting your digital model back into modo or revit to render your lamp and exporting the top and side views to illustrator in order to generate measurable, orthographic drawings, drawn to scale with appropriate line weights and styles.

Schedule:

Oct. 4 Assignment given and rhino tutorial given

Oct. 6 Rhino tutorial part 2, question answer session in class and desk critiques (each of you should have attempted to model 3 lofted surfaces and at least 3 cells)

Oct. 11 desk critiques (you should have built at least 3 different iterations of your shade and panelized it for discussion)

Oct. 13 lab

Oct. 18 Print out and Pin Up – 3d perspective (rendered), top view and side view (drawn in illustrator at ½ scale)

Oct. 20 lab

Oct. 25 Project Due - 3d perspective of lamp(rendered), perspectival rendering of a single cell, top view and side view (drawn in illustrator) presented on a single 11 x 17 page, printed on glossy paper

Oct. 27 James Darknell will be visiting from Luxology to give you an animation, lighting, texture mapping and rendering tutorial in Modo.