Bruno's pages : Links : Tents : Software

Bruno's pages : Links : Tents : Software

This is a collection of links to tent and tension structure design softwares, this isn't complete and I'm not necessarily recommending any of these.
Free

• Sailcut - Sailcut CAD is a sail design and plotting software which allows you to design and visualise your own sail and compute the accurate development of all panels in flat sheets.
• Surface Evolver - The Surface Evolver is 'an interactive program for the study of surfaces shaped by surface tension and other energies'.
• douglas zongker - polyhedra models - Nothing to do with tents, but some great cut-out and stick-together models of the 13 Archimedean semi-regular polyhedra.
• ip slicer - A little tool for creating patterns to make the segments you need to assemble a sphere. It does it entirely with image files so you can turn an atlas into a globe etc..
• NJIT - The New Jersey Institute of Technology have a small fortran package for patterning. it doesn't seem to work, but maybe you'll have more luck than me.
• puzzles with polyhedra and numbers - Puzzles with polyhedra and numbers. In this site one can print copies of polyhedron puzzles (for non-commercial purposes only) and one can read several mathematical articles on the subject.
• Vinicius F. Arcaro homepage - Vinicius is a Brazilian engineer developing software for shell and tension structures.
• Taylors - Some AutoCAD lisp routines for manipulating polyface meshes, slicing and flattening them.

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form z vs rhino - Architosh Forums - Mac CAD and 3D Discussion

form z vs rhino - Architosh Forums - Mac CAD and 3D Discussion: "Originally Posted by frem001
It depends what you are planning on doing. I know that Rhino has some powerful scripts that allow you to flatten and label complex 3d shapes so it can be taken to a laser cutter and then assembled by hand. I haven't seen this in formz.

Both Rhino and formZ have the ability to flatten/unfold objects.

Rhino's buildt unfolding features are comparatively primitive, unless you spend $900 on a plug-on called Expander.

A suggestion would be to have a look at TouchCAD, which is built around the combination of 3D modeling and unfolding / fattenting features. It is the only true five-dimensional program, where all 3D panels are dynamically and parametrically linked to the unfolded patterns. These features integrate the production preparation and optimizing the use of material into the design process and generates production ready results very quickly. TouchCAD comes with a very extensive set of unfolding settings, such as split resolution, direction, overlaps/seam allowances, automatic coordinates, panel and point numbering, alignment marks, stretch unfold calculations, image unfolding etc. On the 3D side TouchCAD comes with a full set of modern push-pull tools, which works from any view and direction, dynamic cross sectioning which is absolute must-have for accurate shape control, etc. www.touchcad.com"

TouchCAD training movies, image unfolding

TouchCAD training movies, image unfolding: "Sail Mapping (7.5 Mb / 5.52 minutes) illustrates the basic steps for importing a background image and mapping it on a sail. TouchCAD currently supports importing from Sails Science Sailmaker, Sail Pack Mouldslize, Azure, Quantum Spinnaker, Prosail, North Sails PAN, Autometrix VRML and point clouds in ASC II TAB format. The import methods may vary slightly between these packages."

Delaunay triangulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Delaunay triangulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "In mathematics, and computational geometry, a Delaunay triangulation for a set P of points in the plane is a triangulation DT(P) such that no point in P is inside the circumcircle of any triangle in DT(P).

Delaunay triangulations maximize the minimum angle of all the angles of the triangles in the triangulation; they tend to avoid skinny triangles. The triangulation was invented by Boris Delaunay in 1934[1].


For a set of points on the same line there is no Delaunay triangulation (in fact, the notion of triangulation is undefined for this case). For four points on the same circle (e.g., the vertices of a rectangle) the Delaunay triangulation is not unique: the two possible triangulations that split the quadrangle into two triangles satisfy the 'Delaunay condition', i.e., the requirement that the circumcircles of all triangles have empty interiors.
By considering circumscribed spheres, the notion of Delaunay triangulation extends to three and higher dimensions. Generalizations are possible to metrics other than Euclidean. However in these cases a Delaunay triangulation is not guaranteed to exist or be unique."

Voronoi Diagrams and Delaunay Triangulation

Voronoi Diagrams and Delaunay Triangulation: "A Voronoi diagram is a geometric structure that represents proximity information about a set of points or objects. Given a set of sites or objects, the plane is partitioned by assigning to each point its nearest site. The points whose nearest site are not unique, form the Voronoi diagram. That is, the points on the Voronoi diagram are equidistant to two or more sites."