Truchet or False
This week I sought out to make the truchet tiles pattern in Rhino using Grasshopper in order to have an adjustable and parametric pattern. I used this tutorial and follow along step by step.
The first step is to make the grid of squares that the pattern will fall into. I used the square component in grasshopper and attached number sliders to be able to adjust the number of cells in the X and Y directions. I flattened the squares so that they would all be in one group. Using the dispatch component, I could then attach a random component that would alternate the pattern (via a true/false value) per square. Adding a number slider to the seed aspect of the random component allows for the whole pattern to change.
Once the pattern components are established, then I started to build the circles for the pattern. From the dispatch component, I hooked up List A to a curve component and exploded it in order to break up the square cells into 4 segments. I built the arcs on opposite ends of each cells using Arc SED and giving them directions. Simply duplicate the process for List B and reverse the sides and directions of each Arc and the truchet tile pattern is established.
From there, the curves can be offset to give them thickness, then I simply lofted the curves and proceeded to extrude them. I then began to alter the pattern to see if I liked how it looked when the curves were at various heights. I thought it looked kinda sloppy so I hit command Z for awhile until it was back to one singular Z plane.
Then I went back and tried to adjust it to make it triangles instead of circles. I put in the triangle component instead of the Arc SED but couldn’t quite sort out the rest of it on my own. I searched for a tutorial and came up short, so I decided to continue to work in the circular truchet tile pattern. I exported a number of different files, including an illustrator file to adjust colors and such .Below are the color variations I came up with from the tile pattern.
