Austen Sartain: Serial Slicing and Surface Population

This project was one of the more interesting projects I've worked on in digital fabrication. The reason for this is because this is the first time I have used Grasshopper before. I wasn't aware of the many things you could do with Grasshopper. I think the most interesting thing about our use of Grasshopper in this project is that you could technically do the entire project without Grasshopper; however, it would be extremely difficult because of amount of work required to get the same result. I would love to learn more about Grasshopper because it seems like the more I expand my Grasshopper knowledge, the better I can expedite my modeling process. The modeling portion of this project was very easy once you know how to use the Grasshopper plugins that were provided. The only difficulty in the modeling portion was trying to boolean union everything together. I ended up having to individually boolean union everything instead, and make changes wherever needed. The most troubling thing about this project was getting my cardboard laser cut. The reason for this was because I was planning on using a laser cutter that is from a maker space outside of UTD. This meant the laser bed had different dimensions than the one at UTD maker space. I went through an extensive process of determining the most efficient way to lay out my slices in Rhino. After this was all complete, I cut the cardboard down to the proper size and got ready to start the laser cutting process. The problem is that the laser cutter was not working. Because of this I ended up having to use the laser cutter on campus after all.