Don't hold me to this but my dos cents- one above is probably manual copy cell etc, the other is probably made from an array grid of circles then deleted manualy, or they made an image which was two colors, black and white, then imput that image into a program like rastorbator which generates a pdf (open in illustrator) and voila cut file for laser cutter. So since the author of the second image probably crafted the image in photoshop, laying out the color based on some idea about aperture id say its less "random". The other way of doing more sophistaced drawings is by scripting. I have recently gotten into scripting at grad school and have made a few simple scripts in python and .rvb . They are simple attractor scripts which can change the scale and loaction of a pattern in relation to a point in space, thus controlling aperture. Good resources for scripted method are www.theverymany.com and www.kokkugia.com . Hope this helps. One more thing, maya is very easy to create perforated mesh patterns that contain within them an idea of change and scaling, very easy. Check out the de Young museum by herzog and de mueron , they used the image to cut file process on their skin system.

thanks rob, great info! i have been wanting to try out some scripting, so maybe this project is a good starting point.

i've played around with this stuff quite a bit....

rather than rhinoscripting, i would use grasshopper. once you get the hang of it, it's super easy to lay down a basic grid and affect the size of an arrayed shape (be it a circle, polygon, or any block) based on 1, 2, or many attractor points. I can explain further if you're interested, or point you to some tutorials...

if you want more control over the output (ie, a complicated gradient that can't be replicated by attractor points), then i'd go with the photoshop-illustrator-cad route.

ie:

1. in photoshop, take any image, convert the layer to a smart object, apply the color halftone filter with all angles set to 0 so you get a grid of differently-sized circles.... play around with the filter settings until you get something that you could reasonably cut without the whole piece falling apart (ie, the "darkest" areas will consist of black circles that almost but don't quite touch... you may have to adjust the levels first so you don't have a solid black anywhere)

2. save the halftone image, drop it into illustrator. use 'live trace' to turn the halftone pattern into a vector image. play with the settings until you get it to give you circles where you should have circles.... or leave it a little sketchy if you like the look better...

3. save as dwg. lasercut.

essentially, this is the same as the 'rastorbator' but you'll have much more control over it....

I spend many pleasant hours with markers, and later home-made rubber stamps, making incredibly complex repeat patterns on 22 x 34 gridded card stock. . .

Cast stone veneer, with irregular repeats




Random ashlar -- no repeats

flip a coin?

SDR, great stuff. thank you for sharing!

EVAN, i would love to hear more about grasshopper and how to get started. the attractor points route looks promising, or at least fun to toy around with.

More grid patterns. The constant of this work is that, in every case, two or more regular patterns are overlaid in order to see what the resulting chaos looks like. In most cases the total repeat is very large, way off the page. I assume these could be made quite easily on the computer -- but not by me !

Anyway, it's too much fun to make them with pencil or home-made ink stamp (I cut white erasers with a razor blade). Gridded paper is an essential ingredient. The work is very soothing to perform, and the results are (for me) worth the time. The possibilities are endless, of course. . .







The black-and-white version of this one was exhibited earlier in the thread.

The first patterns, shown earlier, and the last image above were made with fine-tip markers. An error is easily picked out, near the lower left corner of the last one. . .

switch you might be interested in Fibonacci patterns and fractals. These are mathematically derived, which I won't get into, but suffice it to say it is interesting stuff with incredibly diverse possibilities.

Penrose Fibonacci patterns:





Fractal patterns:

SDR you should put those on the eye candy thread

very nice man

what happens when these patterns become dated?

rockandhill, I'm not sure I follow you, are you refering to the color schemes, patterns going out of style? isn't this a issue to be wrestled with in all designs?

yeah it is but i wasn't trying to play devil's advocate.

i was pointing out that there's an interest to save money/weight on materials, wouldn't figuring out patterns kind of just offset the cost by requiring specialized processes to make molds, man hours machining said materials and man hours spent developing patterns.

I'm all for patterns but from what I gather historically, patterning has always been an expensive and special occasion kind of use. So, I'm not sure of the real relevance to using them? Will the patterns match the furniture? Will the patterns interfere with every day objects?

I mean many of the more modern and patterns I've seen out are kind of instantly dated because it comes off as a "look what I can do with a computer" notion. I kind of feel like this about all architecture in the last 10 years. It's new but by definition "new new is already old."

I'm probably going to get reamed over this.

I don't think anyone has specified yet how these (or other) patterns would be deployed architecturally, have they ? How do you see them being used -- or not -- rockandhill ?

It would be satisfying to see them used structurally, I suppose. If (as used to be predicted, fifty years ago) we had excess energy and material at our disposal, and could afford significant structural redundancy in building, then conceivably such patterns could be used both as structure and as decoration, co-incidentally. The "morality" of this would then have to be debated, perhaps ?

But then we're just at indian screens and half timbering!

I agree that the wow factor can be kind of pointless if the building lacks substance, but on the otherhand, technology makes a lot of these easier to do than in the past.

Why not stamp something interesting into the glazing or molded tile? Historically these items would certainly have been done by hand, much like historic plaster of paris work, but now certain modern accent features can be designed and customized via computer and produced faster and more cheaply.

In some cases it may take only a small fraction of more work than producing the item with no discernable pattern, so the real controlling factor is simply whether or not you want the pattern, not whether or not you can afford it.

This actually makes me think of rood screens now for some reason.