Rhino Command: JewelLightOnLine

With the Strands Tool you have a lot of possibilities to arrange components along strands. With modifiers like “gradient attractor” and “distance attractor” you can create different patterns with component sizes and distances between thus components. There are close to no limitations in combining the functionalities of this tool even though not all combinations will result in a harmonic or comprehensible pattern.

Strands selection: Select one or more strands to use with the strands gradient tool. Beside the button you can see how many strands are selected.
Gravity: With enabling the gravity checkbox, all components are oriented like a pendant as if they are hanging. Otherwise they are oriented like a perl on a chain.
Random strand-axis rotation: By enabling this, all component on the strands will be rotated randomly around there hole axis. This gives some kind of a natural look.
Random Z-axis rotation: By enabling this, all components will be rotated randomly around there global Z-axis. This can be used e.g. for pendants.
Combinations of “Gravity”, “Random Strand-Axis Rotation” and “Random Strand-Axis Rotation” might result in an absurd behavior.

Crystals: In this panel you must define all crystals in all sizes and colors which can be used by the attractors. The “Set” of crystals can be stored with the button on the right and restored with the drop down list. With the black up and down arrows the order of the components can be changed. Thus list of components is used when you are working with the “component gradient attractors”.

Component Gradient Attractor: This tool changes the size / color in the near of so called attractors. So the ordered list of components above are used to great a gradient from the first component in the list to the last one.
Select Attractor: To enable the Gradient Attractor select one or multiple objects of points, curves, surfaces or meshes.
Invert Gradient: This checkbox inverts the direction of the gradient. Normally the nearest one is the top component and the furthest is the bottom.
Random Gradient: By enabling this checkbox, all components on the strands are set randomly and the attractors are not used. In this case the weight slider in the crystals list defines the distribution.
Gradient Start: This slider defines the distance where the gradients starts. For positions below this value the first component in the list is used like at the beginning of the gradient.
Gradient End: This slider defines the distance where the gradients ends. For positions above this value the last component in the list is used like at the end of the gradient.

Component Distance Attractor: This tool changes the distance between the components on the strand. The gap can be increased or decreased depending on the settings.
Select Attractor: To enable the Distance Attractor select one or multiple objects of points, curves, surfaces or meshes.
Invert Attractor Influence: Instead of increasing the distance between the components, the distance will be decreased from the value defined by Default Distance Between Components
Influence: Defines the sphere of influence where the distance will be altered.
Strength: Defines how much the distance will be changed within the sphere of influence.


Distance Type: This gives a basic behavior for calculating the distance between the components beside the Component Distance Attractor.

Distance Type: There are three different types of distance calculating:

• Constant: The distance between all components is the same like shown in the image example “A”. The distance is used from “Min. Distance”.
  
• Largest Component: The distance will be measured from component center to the next like in the image example “B”. The distance is used from “Min. Distance”. To avoid any collision, the distance cannot be lower than the biggest component.
  
• Random: The distance is randomly generated. The value the distance will be between the value of the “Min. distance” and the “Max. distance” field.
  

Simplify preview: By enabling this checkbox, only bounding boxes are shown instead of the components. This is enabled by default to improve visualization performance.

This animation shows the behavior of the gradient attractor. The animation shows the feedback when the parameters and also the attractors itself are changing.

This animation shows the feedback by changing the distance parameter. In this case a single point was used as an attractor.