To think about a bench is to think about several people. And several uses. Some people read, others sleep, some sit and some eat. Sometimes it’s just good to be able to do it all. For the IaaCommunity Bench, we decided to keep it simple and keep it working. A table bench. As the section of the bench was predefined to enable the different proposals to connect, we started by defining that the top of the bench would be flat and the bottom would look like… a bench! The editing process begun by creating a cage with the command CageEdit>Select the Bench>BoundingBox> x=15, y=10, z=4. With the Control Points on, we repositioned the points so we could have the form imagined by us. After the form was defined, we needed to close the interior surface using the command Curve> Curve From Objects> Duplicate Edges. Then to create a surface and finally close the bench, we used the command Loft.
The next step was to use command Contour to create sections of the object in X and Y axis. For that, we created new layers, one for each axe. After creating the “ribs”, we created a new layer called “Intersections”, and used the command “Intersections” to create lines in the intersections between the ribs in X and Y axis. Those lines were used as guidelines to create pipes at the intersections between the ribs.
Using a Grasshopper script we chose ribs on the x-axis, the y-axis and the intersections lines in order to be faster instead of copying and moving each pipe one-by-one manually. After the intersections had been made, we baked the axis individually and grouped each rib by using the TOP view and selecting each line separately.
After we mdke a new layer called DOT, we used the Dot command to name each rib and group it with it’s piece so we would be able to move them around without getting the order of construction lost. We then rotated the ribs so they could be in the same direction. We trimmed each section in order to get the connection edges. Finally we used another script to engrave the numbers and our name in the pieces under a new layer.
To finish the process we deleted the previous layer DOT and drew a rectangle with the dimensions of the wooden board (1200×2500) under a layer Wood. We manually placed each rib on this plane in order to make the most efficient placement and the less use of materials. Finally we created a layer Cut and renamed all the ribs on that layer. The file was then ready to be exported as a .dxf format.