Okay – technically that’s 11 points… it’s a divider that splits a distance into 10 equi-distant points.
Someone asked me to make 5 points… and then 7…
which kindof worked, but really for the precision to be maintained, there needs to be triangles on top of triangles rather than a concertina thing.
So… 11 points it is… I designed this parametrically using Grasshopper and Rhino… so all of the dimensions are attached to sliders, and can all be changed on the fly. Rhino exports DXF which can go straight to the laser-cutter, although I did tinker with it a bit.
Grasshopper is really cool – but leads to crazy-complex designs really quickly… looks like this:
Browser-destroying full-res image here.
I find Grasshopper addictive – like a really interesting puzzle or something. Fortunately for me it only runs in Windows which means booting out of Linux (which I run on my laptop), which I find really annoying… so hardly ever happens. Even though it only takes about 30 seconds, it feels like having to walk all the way to Palmerston North to pick up a carton of milk or something. I have nothing against Palmerston North… I used to live there, but John Cleese disparaged it so they named the rubbish dump after him.
So who would use these?
People who use maps… nautical navigation and such. Also useful for artists to make perspective lines. There’s a video (by someone else) using them here:
They’re also useful for scaling photographs…
This is actually a really old concept – there was a version made by Theo Alteneder & Sons in Philidelphia back in the 1800s… you can still find these on Ebay from time to time.
Why are these better than previous versions?
The loop at the top basically – means you can open and close them with one hand. In addition to that, if you buy them from me you get to talk to the guy who actually makes them – and if you want custom logos on the case, or different sizes, I can probably accommodate.
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