Fractal in 3D CAD

[inventeer]

I'm interested in making a fractal pattern in 3D CAD like ProE or Solidworks.
Have any of you done this before?
Would you be willing to share an example?

 

[GregLocock]

What do you mean by a fractal, there are many types, some of which lend themselves to 3d, others not, to my way of thinking.

Anyway you could just export the 3d values as a point cloud from your fractal generator and then surface that cloud in CAD.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[inventeer]

Thanks Greg,
I was thinking something along the lines of the image below. It would certainly need to be generated by the equations, and not modeled piecewise... This is mostly a curiosity, a fun way to benchmark and compare systems.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hEM5vgawO...0/fractal-art-alfred-laing-spiral-fantasy.jpg

 

[GregLocock]

Another way of building that would be to build a cone, and then stick cones on the outside along a path, and then on the outside of those cones stick small copies of them along the same path, and then repeat ad infinitum. That's good because you are truly building a fractal (-self similar on every scale), and you are using the solid modelling part of the CAD, not just the surfacing and renderer.





Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

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[Cockroach]

I did some work in this a number of years ago when completing a masters degree in mathematics. But I was using C++ software as the platform, Borland I believe, and generating patterns from the various models popular at the time. Basically a development from chaos theory when studying particle dynamics in the rings of Saturn. I'll see if I can dig some of it up, but for sure on those old 5 1/2 floppy disks, can't even read them anymore assuming they're not corrupt.

Regards,
Cockroach

 

[inventeer]

Cool! But I don't have the technology to read a floppy disk...

 

[handleman]

I would daresay it's basically impossible to use SolidWorks to actually generate the type of fractal you pictured. Exporting a point cloud and then surfacing it might get you something that sort of looks like that fractal at some resolution, but that's not generating the fractal in SW, just a representation. Any time you're generating a representation of a fractal you have to choose some arbitrary resolution at which to generate it.

You could probably write a VBA macro to generate said point cloud, but that's still not really SolidWorks creating it. The beauty of fractals (beyond just the pretty image) is the self-similarity at any scale. SolidWorks certainly can't create a static body with infinite self-similarity.

-handleman, CSWP (The new, easy test)

 

[flash3780]

You could probably write a program to generate an IGES file, which is readable in most 3D CAD software.
Here's the IGES spec:

http://www.uspro.org/documents/IGES5-3_forDownload.pdf