Voronoi diagrams are the mathematically perfect form of those shapes that pop up in nature so often (which aren’t fractals -man, I hate fractals. If it turns out Voronoi diagrams are related to fractals – just don’t tell me). If you’ve ever looked at the shapes that a mass of touching bubbles makes, or been intregued by the shapes of sightly packed cell walls, then you’ve seen Voronoi diagrams in nature.
This mini-shelf was made with lollipop sticks and 3d printed connectors – I used Hero-Design’s generator to make a Voronoi-diagram outline, and then I imported that into SketchUp and modelled the connectors by hand. Not the most efficient of processes, I grant you – but my code-fu is too weak at present to generate the connectors procedurally.
As a test, it’s excellent. As a shelf – its use is limited because of it’s teeny tiny size.
I’m kicking myself for not printing the connectors in a jazzier color or painting the lollipop sticks something a little less ‘I made this out of scrap’ style. Maybe I’ll try another – but ideally I want to generate a more complex shelf, scale it up to a usable size, print the connectors and go along to my local lumber supplier with a list of very precise lengths and make myself a full size shelf.
I could ultimately print a shelf easier than going to Ikea. That would be something.