want to walk through a tensegrity rope?
HALO weaves rings of steel struts and cables into a hollow rope. the cables hold the struts apart, and while the struts clear each other the middle stays open to walk down.
shape it
the rope
key figures
the members
the manuscript builds a module in three steps: diagonal struts with secondary cables, then X-cables, then secondary struts.
about
what a tensegrity hollow rope is
A tensegrity structure holds its shape with struts that carry only compression and cables that carry only tension. In a hollow rope the struts never meet at a joint of their own: each one ends where the next begins, so compression runs along the structure inside a net of cables and the middle stays clear.
HALO generates that geometry, then form-finds it: a second step that balances the forces, by a modified force density method. This page is the generation half, in metres; the manuscript has the rest.
how this page was made
HALO.gh is the manuscript's own definition, by this page's author. Wireify 0.3 connected Claude to it inside Grasshopper: it read the live canvas, rewrote the wired chain as one Python component that runs in stock Rhino 8, and built this page as the definition's companion app. Taking the page away from Rhino meant rewriting that component's geometry in JavaScript, which is what solves as you drag.
The port was checked against the live definition at nine states with no mismatches; the raw report has the detail.
reference
HALO.gh here is the definition after that conversion: the wired chain is now an ordinary Python 3 script component, so the file opens in Rhino 8 with nothing installed and carries no dependency on Wireify.
Zargar, S. H., and Alaghmandan, M. (2021). "HALO: Interactive Equilibrium Approach in Designing Tensegrity Hollow-Rope Structures." Journal of Architectural Engineering, 27(3), 04021026. doi:10.1061/(ASCE)AE.1943-5568.0000487