grossju - Final Project

Smart Tower

This project takes inspiration from the framework form, smart powercopies, and knowledge patterns projects.  This smart tower can be thought of as an apartment tower populated with one and two bedroom apartments.  As the building swells and changes shape, its "apartments" swell, shrink, and change shape too.  When an apartment becomes too small to be occupiable, it disappears.  Small, one-bedroom apartments are denoted with a green color, while larger, two-bedroom apartments are denoted with an orange color.

All geometry is driven with a single rotation parameter that spins a wheel.  As the wheel spins, four reference dimensions are drawn like spokes of a wheel that are attached to a point that is slightly off-center.  When these reference dimensions drive geometry, they provide a swelling and shrinking effect.  In the animation above, each reference dimension is dedicated to a specific circle's radius.  The plan on the left can be thought of as a plan of a floor of the tower.

The swell/shrink effect also happens in the elevation of the tower.  Each reference dimension is used in each floor plan, but is assigned to a different circle.  On the ground floor, a reference dimension is assigned the the southern circle.  On the second floor, that same reference dimension is assigned to the western circle.  The clockwise pattern occurs all the way up the tower.

The overall height of the tower is continually changing.  Floor-to-floor heights are inconsistent and are also elements associated to the reference dimensions of the spinning spokes.  The height of the ground floor is the length of spoke 1, the height of the second floor is the length of spoke 2, and so forth...

In order to create apartment "blocks," the circles and curves in the floor plans needed to be broken up in a logical manner.  Points reside where curves intersect, but some of the arcs needed to be divided into three segments to create additional points.

A frame of polylines was then constructed from the new 2D floor plans.

The frame was then populated with "smart apartments" which track their own volume and decide their visibility and color against user-generated threshold volume parameters.

Each powercopy contains a "reference" multi-sections solid and a "viewable" multi-sections solid.  The reference multi-sections solid stays hidden and is not affected by any scripts or parameters.  Instead, it serves as a constant and dependable supplier of data that informs the activity and color of the viewable multi-sections solid.  This avoids any sort of feeback loop issues that one might run into if they are trying to pull volume information from an object that is simultaneously being activated and deactivated (you can't get the volume of an object that is deactivated).

user parameters

The script for the powercopy is written so that if the volume of the reference multi-sections solid is less than both the "activity threshold" parameter and the "color threshold" parameter, the viewable multi-sections solid is turned off.  The apartment block is too small to be occupiable, so why even see it?

If the volume of the reference multi-sections solid is between the volume of the activity threshold parameter and the volume of the color threshold parameter, the viewable multi-sections solid is turned on and becomes a green color.  This means that the apartment block is large enough to be occupiable, but theoretically only large enough to be a one-bedroom apartment.

Lastly, if the volume of the reference multi-sections solid is greater than both the activity threshold parameter and the color threshold parameter, the viewable multi-sections solid is turned on and becomes an orange color.  The apartment block is large enough to be occupiable and be a two-bedroom apartment.

scripted rules