Voxel Tools

The voxel tools offer ligthweight voxel geometry for Rhino. It allows you to quickly generate and manipulate voxelated geometry from meshes, breps, curves and points, and offers boolean operation between voxelgrids. It can convert voxelgrids to solid mesh hulls.

Installation

Rhino 6/7 Use the yak package manager in Rhino 6 or Rhino 7, using the command TestPackageManager in Rhino 6 or PackageManger in Rhino 7, and search for VoxelTools

Alternatively: Rhino 5/6/7: Download the VoxelTools.zip, and place it in %appdata%/components.

Usage

Voxelate geometry

• Closed mesh 01_closed_mesh.gh
• Open Mesh with attractor distance 02_closed_mesh.gh
• Closed Brep 03_closed_brep.gh
• Open Brep with attractor distance 04_open_brep.gh
• Curve with attractor distance 05_curve.gh
• Points with attractor distance 06_points.gh

Boolean operations

For grids of the same size, you can do boolean operations. Boolean operations on voxelgrids are very quick and lightweight.

• Add
• Subtract
• XOR
• Invert

Analysis

• Voxelgrid to boxes
• Voxelgrid statistics
• Voxelgrid to mesh hull

Serialization

• Export voxelgrid to string
• Import voxelgrid from string
• Voxelgrid to List
• Voxelgrid from List

Need Help?

• Please use the github issue tracker if you find bugs
• For support please do not e-mail me personally, but find me (@arendvw) on the McNeel forum, use the tag VoxelTools

Version History

Voxeltools 1.0: release 25th of May 2020

• Cleaned up code base and merged old projects for open source release\
• Component GridToBoxes: Made both outputs consistent, added output selector
• Mesh casting: Default casting to mesh is now without false colors
• Mesh hull: Added non-default option to add false colors to the mesh
• Voxelate Meshes: Closed meshes are now voxelized much better
• Voxelate Curves: Curves are voxelated faster and more precise
• Voxelate Open Breps: Open breps can now also be voxelized with an attractor distance
• Improved warnings in marching cubes from boolean grid
• Added icons for grid to hex and hex to grid
• Obscured non-obvious (pixelgrid) or why factory specific components
• Added documentation

Voxeltools 0.1: Released 2013-2014

Legacy VoxelTools - Legacy version that has circulated on the forums, The Why Factory and other places. Use this version if somehow your older scripts are not compatible with the new version, but upgrade when you can.

Licence

MIT Licence

Roadmap

• Document scalar grids
• Document C# scripting usage using VoxelGeometry.dll
• Document Marching cubes
• Import/Export for voxbin common voxel formats
• Import/export 3d shapenet
• Rotation / movement of voxelgrids
• Union of non-uniformly sized grids
• Offset / Grow / Shrink

Author

Arend van Waart, arend@studioavw.nl

Thanks to

David Rutten, Sander Mulders, Huib Plomp, Adrien Ravon, Leo Stuckart, Boudewijn Thomas, Marek Nosek

The Why Factory Studio Porous Structures

Winy Maas, Alexander Sverdlov, Rob Nijsse, Bas Wijnbeld, Manthan Mevada, M.F. Hercules, Mitalee Parikh, Olga Berning, Peng Zhao, Xiao Du, Rudo Valentijn Koot, M.A. Heredia Moreno, Alberto González Ruiz, Narinna Gyulkhasyan

The Why Factory Studio Egocity

Winy Maas, Adrien Ravon, Felix Madrazo, Charles Ducerisier, Chun Hoi Hui, Francesco Barone, Félix Borel, Iason Stathatos, Javier López-Menchero Ortiz de Salazar, Lucile Dugal, Marek Nosek, Matteo Pavanello, Niels Baljet, Olga Terzi, Prokop Matej, Tarryn Leeferink, Wen Jun Tan, Woo Soojung, Zichen Liu, Loes Thijssen

Publications

PoroCity, Opening up Solidity