My custom block library
nTopology offers a very user-friendly mechanism for creating your own customized workflow as a block that can be imported and used just like any other built-in block.
Over last couple months, I have made some interesting and useful custom blocks that came handy to me. Specially in adding novel texture and architecture to an implicit body.
These custom blocks create textures that follow the curvature and the normal direction of an implicit body. The two pictures below show the difference between the built-in nTop architecture/texture block and a morphing pattern block.
The built-in perforation block in nTop does not offer control over the number of holes and follows a constant direction --no matter what the surface normal is pointing to.
This morphing perforation custom block allows you to change the number of holes and their dimensions and it morphs the implicit surface.
Morphing perforation
This block creates number of holes with given dimensions at random points on the input implicit body surface. The axis of the holes are normal to the surface and coincides with the individual random point assigned to that hole.
This block has the capability to perforate/indent one side of the implicit body. The block uses the flooding functionality of nTopology Platform to select one side of the body that is closest to the proximity point and find the surface edges by tracing the changes in the normal vector angle between two adjacent mesh cells. The wider the tracing angle the less sensitive is the algorithm in picking up the edge of the surface.
The input parameters are pretty much self explanatory, but if more information is need, the properties tab -available by clicking on the question mark on the top right side corner of the block- has more descriptive information.
Morphing perforation with sine profile
This block works pretty much similar to the morphing perforation block above, just creates holes with sinusoidal profile.
The input parameters are pretty much self explanatory, but if more information is need just use the properties tab by clicking on the question mark on the top right side corner of the block. The definition of frequency might be counter intuitive a little bit, however, the profile formula can be adjusted to one's choosing by editing the math function embedded in the block itself.
Morphing pin forest
This block works pretty much similar to the other two morphing perforation blocks.
The input parameters are pretty much self explanatory, but if more information is need just use the properties tab by clicking on the question mark on the top right side corner of the block.
Morphing hollow pin forest
This block offers a combination of pinned texture and perforation. Keep in mind using the above blocks (perforation and pin forest) won't give the same result. Mostly because the random points generated in these two blocks could be different, unless the seed value and the input implicit body are exactly the same.
I-graph Wrapping Package
nTopology Platform comes with variety of fill types for TPMS structures, however, IWP is not included in the software by default. This custom block allows creating an IWP implicit body. Block inputs are an implicit body and cell size vector.
Note that this specific block has been normalized in mm unit system, any other nTop length unit system can be processed by slight modification in the block.
This block is a good example for creating your own implicit body from a formula in nTop.
Voronoi architecture with rectangular cross section
By default the voronoi emboss block from Architected Materials module creates a surface texture with circular cross section. This block allows creating a voronoi texture with rectangular cross section and control its dimensions.
The block returns the texture as a separate body which can be used to emboss or deboss the initial implicit body.
Download this block from my custom blocks repository on GitHub:
CB_VMC
How to import custom blocks?
Click the plus sign next to the search block in your notebook and navigate to the custom block file and click the import block bottom.
