Models in Rhino

Rhino has been my modelling tool since 2014. The archive holds 263 Rhino files from 2014 to 2023, and most of them are drawings for a machine. They start as parts for the laser cutter, become shapes for the resin printer, and end up as joints, wearables and lenses. These are the ones not told elsewhere on this site.

2014: modelling for making

The earliest files are from a fabrication class in September 2014. By November I was modelling a composite: an octagon of eight hard frames, each holding a softer inset, so that one object could be made from two materials. A notebook page from the same months is headed Multi-Material Algorithm Separation. It sets a geometric composite modelled by hand beside one grown by a physics simulation.

That winter I also worked through the RhinoPython primer, running its scripts to grow branches and gears.

2015: joints

In February 2015 I drew a branching hook as a study of tension joints. The same spring the laser-cut parts of the solar tracker were drawn here too.

2017: for the printer

From late 2016 the models were made for the resin printer: the diatoms, tori, Voronoi vessels and snake vase in Light in Resin. One that didn’t make it into that post is a cluster of branching tubes from February 2017.

2018: wearables and structures

In 2018 the drawings were for light and bodies. There was a crystal lamp in March, cut patterns for an LED armour backpack in May, and the octagonal body of a spider robot in August. From October to December I drew a coliseum tent and the hexagonal joints that hold its tubes together.

2019: lenses

The last of the series is a spiral lens from May 2019: a shallow dish of faceted cells, filed in a folder called Crystallography.