Honeycomb tube

Support Modeling
1

I’ve tried searching Google and the forums using all the terms I could think of and just can’t find an answer to this.

I’m trying to make a cube made of honeycomb pattern.

I tried creating a plane of honeycomb pattern using the add mesh extra objects addon - 20cols and 20rows then I created a curve > circle and applied the curve modifier to the honeycomb mesh. This almost works but it spirals in towards the center instead of sticking to the curve completely.

Am I doing this the wrong way or is there a setting I’m missing?

2

Am I doing this the wrong way or is there a setting I’m missing?
I don’t know what you’re missing but we’re missing any kind of useful information to help understand what you want.
reference images, screenshots and blend files showing what you have achieved so far !

3

You’re trying to make a tube like this?


If you have a flat honeycomb pattern, you can use Mesh > Transform > Warp to turn it into a tube.

4

Oddly enough… http://pauljs75.deviantart.com/art/TubeRun-459049717

It looks cool though, doesn’t it?

I did that at the end of last week. Was kind of slow on my computer, since it had 1 level of subdiv. (I imported my mesh segment from Wings3d, so that subdiv was built-in.) Also rendered kind of slow, so only 250 samples in Cycles, thus the graininess.

To get that animation working and setup for preview without lag, I had to dupe the path with nothing other than the camera, a light, and an empty constrained to it. (I can post the blend if anyone is curious. File is only 943KiB, overhead comes from modifier replication.) The dupe path was necessary because my first try while using the same path for the mesh modifier made unnecessary overhead recalculating the mesh every time the path animation frame changed. (At least that’s how it works in 2.70a)

I think I ran into what you’re talking about in regards to bloating in or just deforming weirdly. If you’re having it follow a curve with a modifier, you’ll either have to set the radius at each curve handle or disable the radius checkmark under curve object data.

5

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Oh… Cube? Tube? If you want a cube-shaped honeycomb mesh tube (I’ve seen some outdoor patio/pool furniture like that), that can be done too. If you need specific details, I could try making a video, since it’s a bit difficult for me to explain otherwise.

6

Not exactly the cube this time around, but this process can get a honeycomb structure that follows about any shape you can define with a path.