Looking for a 2D Fractal line plug-in

[Omnivorist]

I can envisage a plugin for Vectorworks that I would find extremely useful.

I would like to draw a freehand (or coarsely segmented) polyline or polygon and be able to 'crinkle' it to a controllable extent in a fractal-type manner.

I would use this for creating simple representations of vegetation profiles in either plan or elevation.

Does anyone know of such an add-on?

The simpler the better, as far as I'm concerned.

David Wilson

[islandmon]

What you're describing is a Koch Curve: http://www.fractalnet.org/gallery2/v/FRACTAL/?g2_page=3

About The Koch Snowflake

See also: Dragon Curve

The Koch Snowflake Curve (aka the Koch Island) is a fractal planar curve of infinite length and Hausdorff dimension approximately 1.262. It is defined as the limit of a sequence of polygonal curves defined recursively as follows:

1) The first polygon is an equilateral triangle.

2) The (n + 1)st polygon is created from the n-th polygon by applying the following rule to each edge: construct an equilateral triangle with base the middle third of the edge and pointing towards the outside of the polygon, then remove the base of this new triangle.

.

At each step the number of segments increases by a factor 4 with the new segments being one third the length of the old ones. Since all end points of segments are already points on the limit curve we see that no part of the limit curve has finite length.

[islandmon]

Interactive Koch Fractal via browser java

[IanH]

Designer and Landmark have the plant line tool that may do what you require. It is not that easy to control though, needing a bit of exerimentation to get the segment length and thickness to produce a good result.

Another option may be balloon style? You can do this with the revision cloud tool under dome/notes. If you ungroup it, it becomes a polyline that you can cut and manipulate further. This is a core fundamentals feature.

Both can also benefit from being overlapped with themselves, producing a more random outline.

[islandmon]

I can envisage a ( fractal ) plugin for Vectorworks that I would find extremely useful.

Totally concur ... a scalable pure Fractal plug-in would be awesome.