The design idea used to create the tile was a method of force fields. In creating this seamless pattern multiple spin forces were merged together and the effect of field lines was extended for better visualization and incorporation into the water evacuation system.

Every line of the system is represented as an “escaping” curve. Each point tries to get away from the force field quickly, leaving those paths behind and creating the data tree structure. By playing with parameters like length, force, radius, distance in between, we could create a controlled distortion according to these field lines and force center. The tile is divided into 3 parts according to the water evacuation points on the external edges: 2, 3 and 4. The force fields were placed accordingly on splines starting from these points of reference. The slope of the tile decreases gradually outwards following the rhythm of the water canals and pattern, enhancing the water evacuation.   The reference for the picture and original grasshopper script is:

http://www.designcoding.net/force-fields-revisited/

To discover our milling strategy we experimented repeatedly with RhinoCam. In the end, for our design, we selected the 12 mm ballmill as it gave us the optimal finish and kept our machining time within the 2 hour limit. We first ran a horizontal roughing to carve the canals then curve machining to overlay the thin contour lines. In the end we didn’t do a perimiter engraving in order to allow for continuity of the lines over the edge and side of the tiles.