I ran across a quick exercise in designing 3d grates. It's a simple enough combination of linear bars and perpendicular supports. Given that there were multiple starting shapes and depths, I decided to do this in grasshopper to better get a faster grasp of the different parameters.
Screenshot:
Grasshopper file:
In a bit more detail, the gh file inputs are:
- Perimeter of the drip tray (this gives the long and short distances)
- Height of the drip tray (this helps calculate overlap)
- Dimensions of bars lengthwise
- Dimensions of perpendicular bars
- Void at bottom (for better drainage)
The intermediate steps are as rather simple:
- Locate and create the long bars, center accordingly
- Locate and create the short bars, boolean out the long bars to create notches, and boolean out the void for better drainage
In doing this work I realized:
- I love playing with grasshopper. It's slow at times, and troubleshooting can be a pain, but it's still one of the more powerful tools that I know.
- I need to create more customized clusters to help speed up future work.
