Only thing I can think of is RhinoNest (paid plugin) or perhaps use Grasshopper. Or maybe it could be done with one of the Rhino jewelry plugins? I think they have some kind of nesting routines for setting pave which might be applicable on an arbitrary shape?

jonah

Couldnt you make an array of the object you want then trim it with the letter ?

May be your looking for the software to "determine the best size" of the fill object to hatch the letter"

If its for leds then they will be a specific size and only fit one way.

Am I missing something?

Hi Gabi, it would probably help a lot if you could include some kind of sketch or drawing of what you are talking about, that would make it a lot clearer.

If you just want a shape to tile an area, like Burr mentions you can replicate that shape using Transform / Array / Grid, and then use Trim or a boolean to cut pieces that overlap with your boundary.

If you want to have circles that fill an area without any of them being cut, then that is a much different problem - MoI does not have any built in tools for that, and typically you will need to look for some specialized software to handle that kind of a thing. If this is what you are trying to do, try searching for "packing" or "nesting" type software.

- Michael

Hi Gabi, also one other note - if you are looking to tile an area with a sort of hexagonal grid rather than the regular rectangular layout grid, then that is possible to do by using the Transform / Array / Dir command in 2 passes, like this:



Is that possibly the kind of pattern that you were wanting?

- Michael

This was my idea because as he stated it was for a "LED" installation which would mean the hatch isnt adjusted to fill the geometry with the "best fit" but rather you just need to accept "what fits within". THen only keep whole peices after the boolean or trim.

Hi Michael,

This isn't about the topic at hand, but I was wondering what you use to create your gifs?

Thanks,

Jesse

Hi Jesse,

> This isn't about the topic at hand, but I was
> wondering what you use to create your gifs?

I use Camtasia Studio v5 (http://www.techsmith.com/), it's proven to be an extremely useful communication tool.

There are just so many instances where a screencap shows something much more clearly than trying to describe it with a bunch of text.

I also used it to make the video tutorials - it can generate a bunch of other kinds of video formats like WMV, Flash, etc... which are more efficient for something with a longer running time. But a GIF works great for something like 10-20 seconds or so.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks, It seems to do the job nicely. I can see how it would be very useful to you,
but the amount it costs compared to my need for it doesn't really match up too well. :-)

I once had a free gif maker that worked pretty well, but can't remember the name of it
or where I downloaded it from. I used to use it on simple Rhino turntable animations.

Jesse

Hi Jesse, there are some free tools for screen capture available - one is called Wink (http://www.debugmode.com/wink/) and another one is called CamStudio (http://camstudio.org/). Those will work, they just are not quite as slick and easy/quick to use as Camtasia.

There is also a newer thing called Jing (http://www.jingproject.com/) which I think is free and also from the same people who do Camtasia so that could be another candidate.

- Michael