Lotus

Joint work with Erik Demaine, Riccardo Foschi, Robby Kraft, Rupert Maleczek and Tomohiro Tachi.

Lotus is a Grasshopper component for the design of developable surfaces and the construction of curved creases that connect developable surfaces with cylinders and cones. It is an implementation of the mathematical foundation that is presented in this paper.

Soon available on food4rhino!

Components

Lotus components: SlidingDevelopable, UnrollDevelopable, PatchToCylCone(3pt) and PatchToCylCone(tan).

The SlidingDevelopable component allows the user to bend a planar patch with rigid rulings such that one curved boundary remains in the base plane.

Illustration of the SlidingDevelopable component.

The PatchToCylCone components construct creases between a given developable surface and a cylinder or a cone which are specified by two points on the crease curve and the 3D ruling direction or cone apex.

Curved crease between a developable surface patch and a cylinder.
Curved crease between a developable surface patch and a cone.

Gallery of user examples

Time lapse of the reconstruction of the folded Vesica Piscis

Folded Vesica Piscis reconstructed with Lotus.