Modeling a Parametric Structure
I wanted to create a pavilion that consisted of two different arc heights that undulated back and forth. I began by creating a series that would plug into the X dimension of each arc. The distance and amount of arcs can be parametrically adjusted by the Steps and the Count parameters. I then reflected the points with a Mirror node and plugged the original and mirrored points into the Arc node. To create the ‘undulated’ look, I created two sliders, “Bigger curve” and “Smaller curve,” which I then merged and used a Repeat node to ensure the two heights are repeated throughout the desired length of the pavilion. Finally, I lofted the arcs and added a Diagrid facade, which is also parametrically controlled by U and V divisions.
Transforming my Geometry
Instead of limiting the undulation to just two heights, I added the ability to dynamically change the undulation of the pavilion, following the curve of a continuous sine wave. I replaced the Merge and Repeat nodes by doing the following: First, I added a Range node which generates equally distributed values across the chosen interval. Then, I added a Multiplication node to scale the values by a waveIntensity factor. The result was fed into a Sine function. Finally, I used ReMap which translates the output from its natural range of [-1, 1] into a custom target domain to define the minimum and maximum bounds of the transformation. This effectively gives the pavilion shape a much more natural looking wave, rather than being restricted to just 2 extreme heights.