The always amazing David Rutten has one or Rhino on his site http://reconstructivism.net/

You can also check out Material Systems
http://materialsystems.org/

May I ask why is this post related to Frank Gehry in the title?

so people would care to read

so that we can find out if ol' frank will be facing off against columbia in the second round of the archinect world cup, that's why.

If you really wanted to make it popular round archinect you could have named it columbia vs.voronoi, voronoi blows, or Hi all you fancy script lovers.

But using the vs. format in your first post is pretty impressive

David Rutten's script is good but it is only 2D and quite slow. I started using that but then figured out how to script a connection to qhull from rhino. This was faster but more recently I wrote a C# feature for Generative Components to connect to qhull. This is much much faster (like 5 seconds for around 500 input sites). I've put the GC one on my site (materialsystems) but not the Rhinoscript one yet. It still needs some work and hopefully this summer I'll get a chance to make the script into a plugin for rhino. email me for more info.

qhull thing is becoming a legend for me. I could never managed to make it work....Maybe one day

Qhull works fine. It's just that qhull only inputs and outputs text files, so the hard part is figuring out how to make your 3d program write and read qhulls files. Although difficult, it can be done once you figure out qhull's unique vocabulary. For example, cells = regions, inital points = input sites, edges = ridges, etc. As a hint, you only need to use the "o" and "Fv" output options to produce the required info for Maya, Rhino, Max, etc to read and correctly construct the cells.

I have been giong through the thigns I have downloaded from qhull.org. I couldn`t managed to give inputs or taking any outputs from. I run qhull file, ms-dos opens-I feel happy(this it might work). Then it gives the same message again and again. If i can get voronoi vertices or edges I can write a quick script to trace it and make the shape in maya but....... oh! this is frustrating....But thanks a lot

hmmm, I'm not sure what is wrong with your set-up since you didn't give the error message, but it sounds like maybe the input file is not formatted correctly.

Copy the sample text below and save it as input.txt in the qhull folder. Then run the QHULL-GO file and enter "qvoronoi o Fv <input.txt >output.txt " at the command line and see if you get a nice long output.txt file in your qhull folder.

3
20
-3 4 0
-1 3 0
-3 0 0
-6 -3 0
-9 -1 0
-8 3 0
-7 -1 4
-3 2 4
-4 -2 4
0 -3 4
0 5 4
-7 5 4
-10 2 2
-4 6 2
-6 1 2
-1 0 2
-2 -4 2
-9 -3 2
1 1 2
-5 3 2

it WORKED. So i supposing these are the cordinates of edges or vertices. Some lines have lots of different coordinates in them. And If i consider these as cordiantes and enter maya as points and draw btw closest points would i have a 3d voronoi diagram.... Thanks again..

Hi

Some of these are nice structures --- but have anyone thought about producing them in real, I think a few as Solid models could do well, being processed as a 3D-H then it can be cut as a 3D-H framework and acturly be made, made simple a fraction the cost calculated for strength. Yes I see many of these as Solid models perfect for sectioning.

Btw. is that an input text file , gee I know these from when I used external files for AutoCAD , with poly meshes. Anyone ever tried a 3D interpolation program an inbetween of say a plane and a boat ? You be surprised.

Can: The output file is a bit confusing. The "o" and "Fv" options give a couple of different types of data. I can't remember all of them (look them up in the qvoornoi help), but essetnially it gives you the coordinates of the voronoi cell vertices first and then a bunch of ther information relating to the network logic. That is, it tells you what the vertices for each cell, the vertices for each face on that cell, and a couple of other things. By parsing all this data you can create solids.

Thank you very much for your help....I will try to figure the rest of it out....By the way what are things vindpust is talking about?

Just curious --- as alway's when I see exiting structures I ask ,can it be build.
Often architects don't care and leave that to the engineer, but I know from my own trouble with AutoCAD meshes that offer _very lmited options that with just a bit programming even AutoCAD will allow quite comples polymeshes -- you just have to program both export and import plus calculations yourself.
I know what you are talking about is much further but basicly ; if it just display Solids generated from a set of rules -- how will it be possible to acturly build these things so it hold measures and contain strength to hole itself in the air. Well from the pictures I seen most of these structures can be worked so they can .

For a minute there I thought "3d-voronoi" was the cool new nickname for Raphael Vinoly...

Hi Andrew-

I downloaded the GC script from your site, but being a novice GC user I'm curious as to how it will run inside GC? I've downloaded qhull as well...

The file posted on the FTP is a .cs file -- is this correct, or should it be .gcs (GC script)?

Thanks for providing some clarification above...

May I ask a stupid question....What is GC.. Is it a parametrics program(it sounds like one)... And wwhy is it better to use with qhull. I thought C based languages were the fastest so, why not maya? Convert the out put to a digital model would be very very easy too?????????

GC is a parametric add-on (read:parasite) to Bentley Microstation... it has the option to run different action scripts, which is what I suppose would allow it to activate the qhull software outside of GC and import the data.

it is in Beta (or Pre-Beta?) right now, so it can be rather buggy and not very intuitive to use. being parametric/associative it does have some powerful potential, but it hasn't reached the CATIA level of refinement yet.

can? / Andrew -- I've also run the qhull <input >output files, but what method does one use to convert the coordinates to geometry in Rhino (for example)? scripting? ReadCommandFile?

thx

I was thinink about a very basic MEL script which every point will calculate the closest point or its poisition in the cell as the output gives the cells as well and connects those lines. It is very easy to write a script where points will search for adjasent one in a certain radius and then an if sentence which will go through each to find the closet one and deselect the far one. I don`t know if it will do the job or not though.

Actually if you can send me the points in dxf or obj i might work on it. I didn`t had time to figure out what output means so i don`t have the dots in maya yet..

RNNR: I used rhinoscript to create a text file with point coordinates. Rhinoscript, with the help of windows shell script, sends the text file to qhull to calculate. When this qhull is done, it's output text file is read back into rhino and the data is parsed to construct solids around each original point.

In GC the process is much the same excpet I don't use text file and instead directly pipe the data back and forth between GC and qhull. This saves some processing time as the data is never "written" or "read" from a file but just passed directly between the programs. The GC feature was written in C# but is a bit buggy and I haven't had time to find out why. As far as loading the feature, I actually forget how to do that, but it shouldn't be hard. It's under one of the menus, I think. I'll do a bit of research on that.

In maya it should be nearly the same process as in rhino. You don't have to have maya calcuate anything, qhull does that. Maya simply needs to take that data and draw geometry. All of the data about adjacency, position, etc can be extracted out of the qhull output.

Hi Andrew and everyone. I have been using Generative Components for a while and have since attempted to install the GC Qhull plugin but it has never worked and I wonder what I might be doing wrong.

I basically downloaded the pack from www.cerver.org and followed the install instructions on the website but nothing seems to be working I wonder if there is anyone who can walk me through the process of installation?

The instructions below I found at http://www.cerver.org/research/gcqhull/

INSTALL:

1. Place the GCQhull.dll in your GC Assembly Directory
2. Download Qhull (www.qhull.org)
3. Unpack Qhull install anywhere you want.
4. Copy the “rcQhull.cfg” into your GC home Directory usually ….\WorkSpace\GenerativeComponents\
5. Edit the file with notepad to match where you installed Qhull.
6. load GCQhull.dll in GC and Enjoy

When I trying to follow these I get noithing. Also Qhull does not seem to be a program that installs its like one of those run off the usb applets is this so?

I was expecting something like this: