Mini 3 - “A Seat at the Table”

3D Printing Parametric Furniture Designs

Task 1

For my piece of furniture, I chose a podium. Inside the podium is a Voronoi pattern. A Voronoi diagram is a method to divide space into several regions based on a set of predefined points known as sites. Each region, called a Voronoi cell, consists of all the points that are closer to its corresponding site than to any other site. This creates a mosaic-like pattern where the boundaries between cells are equidistant from the nearest two sites. Voronoi diagrams are utilized in various fields, including computer graphics, meteorology, and urban planning, to model and analyze spatial distributions and proximity relationships.

The image below illustrates how my design was created. I began by creating a rectangle. I used the Population component to randomly fill this rectangle with 2D points. Then, I used the Voronoi component to create a diagram. This diagram is a collection of 2D cells defined by lines. To extrude this into a 3D form, I used the Offset component to parametrically scale each cell around its center. Next, I performed some Boolean offsetting to obtain the correct region. I utilized the Extrude component to transform this into a 3D shape. For my podium, I wanted to add curves to the side. To achieve this, I created two cylinders that are offset to the left and right of the center. I used the Solid Difference to subtract the cylinders from the extruded Voronoi diagram.

I got the idea to use the offsetting to thicken the voronoi pattern from here

Varying the number of cells

The image below shows 5 different designs with increasing number of points and therefore Voronoi cells. I will fabricate two of these in the next task.

Grasshopper Script

The script can be downloaded here.

Task 2

All designs were fabricated using PLA