Jelbert Data driven Archimedean spiral in OpenScad and Python

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This 3D sculpture is my attempt at visualizing an input dataset in a tangible form. I chose the Archimedean spiral because it's compact and visually appealing. In this case, I'm representing car journey speed data where height signifies speed throughout the trip. OpenScad can't directly read data files so I created a library containing the data vector (list of variables). This library file is then imported into the OpenScad script and looped through to generate the shape. The workflow goes like this: 1) The original data file is captured - in this case, it's a car journey where location and speed are recorded every second using a GPS logger. The source data in this example is called "0000000_formatspd.json" and contains just speed data and date time stamp per second. 2) I then run my Python based converter script called "trip2datascad.py" against this source data file which uses the speed component each second and writes it to "data.scad" (which is the OpenScad library). To do this, you'll need to type "python trip2datascad.py 0000000_formatspd.json data.scad". ... where the first parameter is the input filename and the second is the output filename. 3) I then open the main OpenScad script called "data_spiral.scad" which includes the data.scad library so all of the data is available in a vector within the code. 4) In the OpenScad application, render the file and save as a .stl file ready for slicing and 3D printing! Some parameters of the disk and spiral are controlled via variables in the OpenScad code so you'll need to adapt them if you use different data points. You'll see in my OpenScad code that the cubes making up the data driven part of the object are 2 by 2. I tried to make them smaller but Cura takes forever to slice the stl file. If you want to do something similar to this project, feel free to customize the OpenScad and Python code and upload as a Remix. Good luck 3D printing your data! Updates: 22nd September 2018 - minor update to source data file. 6th September 2018 - added additional text to base of spiral model. 3rd September 2018 - added the source car speed data JSON file.