Hi ActiveRendering, it tends to be a lot easier to make a repeating pattern like that all flat on the ground at first and then use Flow when you're done to warp it onto a curved surface as opposed to drawing the interwoven strands directly in place.

To make the pattern, something like this, start by drawing a control point curve with grid snap turned on placing points in a straight line and then move the ends downwards like this:




Then use Construct > Extrude to extrude the curve into a wide surface, then select the widened surface and run Extrude again to give it thickness:



Make a 90 degree rotated copy of it, quick way is to hold down ctrl and drag on the edit frame rotation handle:



Move the rotated piece over:



Copy this over diagonally one cell step to make the base pattern:



Then use Transform > Array > Grid to replicate the pattern, having used grid snap earlier can make it easier to figure out the array cell size you need.





Then you'll put a large plane under that which will be the base surface for Flow, then you'll have a curved vertical surface as the target for the Flow. There are some examples of Flow here: http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference8.htm#flow

I've attached 3DM file with an example starting cell, it's ready to be arrayed with a grid size of 15x15 to make the pattern.

- Michael

On a tangent: that would be really hard to injection mould as is. You'd need slides for the weave pattern but these would interfere the deep rim...

Google searches were mostly non-productive, but many other interesting topics were discovered!

After more pondering, it becomes clear that weaving strips would mechanically behave as elastica curves.
The _Elastica2 script, with a mu or U.value of around 0.95 to 0.98 seems very promising.

- Brian