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What is the course about?
The Fields Plus grasshopper plugin developed at The Different Design extends the capabilities of the native fields components and tools found within Grasshopper.
Fields Plus gives you six new Force components that allow you to extend the capabilities of fields simulations within Grasshopper. The plugin also contains four new field line simulation components that allow you to entirely new ways to control the field line outputs for your designs. These components all use multithreading to significantly increase the speed at which your field lines are calculated.
This plugin works with all existing Field components in Grasshopper, giving you the ability to create more unique field simulations than ever before!
What will you learn in each lesson?
- 0 tutorials
- No video content
- Fields Plus
This lesson will explain how to download and install the Fields Plus plugin for Grasshopper.
The Tangent Force component works by taking any curve as an input, and moving field lines in the direction of the closest point on a curve’s tangent. When multiple curves are input, the fields can be merged to create a force field that essentially tweens between a collection of curves.
This example looks closely at the Axis Spin Force component, which builds on the logic of the native Spin Force component in Grasshopper, but instead pushes the field vectors along an axis defined by a line or curve whilst simultaneously revolving these vectors around the axis.
This example looks closely at the Plane Force component, which enables the creation of a force field through any plane geometry. The component allows you to run create a force based on the X, Y or Z axis of any plane input into the component.
This example looks closely at the Pinch Force component, which pinches field lines inwards and along the direction of an axis (defined by a line or vector).
This example looks closely at the Vector Force component, which serves as an alternative to the native Vector Force component in Grasshopper. The native version if this component computes an average of all input vectors to create a field with a singular direction. This alternative Vector component instead creates an averaged field based on any input vectors.
This example looks closely at the Spiral Force component, which create a spiralling force field around a point in 3D space. Similar to the Spin Force component in Grasshopper, the Spiral Force moves field lines around it, whilst simultaneously pulling them inward.
This example looks closely at the Field Line Grid component, which allows field line simulations to be snapped to a cubic grid of a predetermined size. In the case of this example, a field is simulated using the Pinch Force component and the Tangent Force component to create a merged field, and the fields are then stepped through whilst being snapped to a nearest grid point at each step.
This example looks closely at the Field Line Surface component, which allows field line simulations to occur directly on any input surface. These simulations can be used in conjunction with any field force or charges, and essentially snaps the lines directly to the input surface.
This example looks closely at the Field Line Discrete component, which allows field line simulations to be snapped to any vector or line input. In the case of this example, we use the Vector Array component (also part of the Fields Plus plugin) to generate our vector snaps, however any line or vector could be used. These simulations can be used in conjunction with any field force or charges, and essentially snaps the field lines directly to the input vectors.
What are the learning objectives for the course?
- Understand how the force components can be used to extend the fields library in Grasshopper
- Understand how the field lines components can offer new ways of evaluating force fields in Grasshopper
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