Creating lamp with pattern -some advice

[Anonymous]

 Hello,

I'm trying to create a lamp similar to the blue one on the picture except that I wants only hex(no X). But I do not know how to replicate the pattern (steps). I have tried with projected sketch of the below lamp shape but the hex are deformed....You can see that there's always the same amount of hex on each height, the hex get larger but not deformed. What kind of pattern it is?

thanks!

[jodom4]

Welcome to the community! Dynamo is the best way to achieve this kind of result. Have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d5hKSAsB68

[TrippyLighting]

Dynamo is nice but the caveat is that it only runs on Windows.

The second caveat is that it is not free but after a 30 day trial is $300 annually.

If one does not not stay within the Autodesk family of products I'd probably do this with Blender or SideFX Houdini really is the absolut master of procedural modeling.

Or one uses Rhino with Grasshopper.

[I_Forge_KC]

I'd throw in nTopology Element if you're cool with mesh output as well.

[etfrench · Accepted solution]

Why not just do it in Fusion 360

This screencast shows one way to proceed:

Notes: 

I just picked some random heights for each row.  The height of each row should be a function of the diameter of the row and the count in the pattern.

It may be easier to just model the top and bottom horizontal legs of each row of hexagons, then add the vertical legs after making the pattern.

[Anonymous]

Wow!!!

thank you so much, this is really want I wanted to know. The best part is how you sketch the hex on the surface of the lamp.

[chrisplyler]

Of course they are deformed.

At any row where they are tangent to a cylinder surface, they don't have to be deformed. But anywhere the lamp slants inwards/outwards, any given row is tangent to a CONE surface. Any regular shape repeated around the surface of a cone must have one end more narrow than the other end.

Now, you can certainly model a lamp where the hexes aren't distorted, but the shared perimeters of those hexes aren't going to blend into a single consistent edges.

[TrippyLighting]

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@etfrench wrote:

Why not just do it in Fusion 360

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It can be approximated in Fusion 360 but it does not reflect the geometry shown in the image, but then that might not matter.

The real problem I see is performance. The lamp image might have only served as an example and for the actual object as modeled not nearly as many instances are needed. However, if you model something in Fusion 360 with that much geometry it is going to choke on it.

Software that deals with Sub-D meshes can deal with an amount of geometry that is completely beyond any traditional CAD software, even the most performant one.

I tried this out in ZW3D, which is incredibly fast at creating geometry. You can model that hex pattern flat and then wrap it around such a base lamp shade object.

It works but it is not nearly as fast and interactive as it is with 10 times more geometry in a Sub-D modeler.