Boolean Operations
Professor Maged Guerguis | Fall 2018
This project yielded various forms via the use of manual and digital boolean operations. The idea was to develop a unique, organic form and then learn how to translate that process into the digital realm. This project acted as a gateway, leading up to the Riverwalk Opera.
Manual Operations
In order to develop a boolean form manually, I utilized artificial foam gourds, cut, and glued them to develop smooth intersections. I started with two and continued on until an entire formwork had been constructed entirely of gourds. Next, I poured plaster into the gourd formwork, allowed it to set, and then carefully deconstructed the mold to reveal the resulting negative form/boolean difference.
Digital Operations
In order to develop a digital boolean form, I took the physical foam gourd and sliced it into sixteen pieces. I then traced an image taken of the profile of these pieces utilizing Rhinoceros 3D modeling software. Once I had all 16 outlines, I arranged them around a polar array. I placed horizontal surfaces equal distances apart along the vertical axis of the curves. I then used the "intersect" command to find the intersections of these surfaces and the curves. I took the intersection points and interpolated a curve through the points at each individual height. This yielded a wireframe model. Using this wireframe model, I was able to develop a mesh from the curves. I made minor edits to the resulting mesh command using the until it resembled the physical gourd as closely as possible. Finally, I was able to convert the mesh to a NURBS surface, yielding a "solid" digital gourd.
I took the resultant gourd form, copied, pasted, and rotated it until I had developed a convincing boolean intersection. Since copying more than two of these high-definition gourds would have likely crashed any computer, I decided it would be best to develop my 72-gourd digital formwork by utilizing the Grasshopper parametric modeling program and instructing it to randomly rotate the gourds to develop highly interesting intersections.
Once the digital formwork was created, I was able to "bake" it and then run a simple boolean difference between the gourds and a cube. The result was a perfect digital negative of the space between the gourds. The form came out so clean that it was actually able to be 3D printed as well. I believe the most fascinating part of this project was to get to see this boolean form as both a digital line drawing as well as a physical 3D print.
