With the base and forest in place, I then put together the faceted formwork of the card.
Despite all of the pieces being cut precisely on the laser cutter, it was still a very laborious and difficult process to put it all together. This is because it curves in many different directions, so there was resistance in multiple directions as I tried to connect each piece together. Related to this, there was a slight issue with having all of the fold lines etched on the same side - some of them folded easily, whereas ones needing to fold back on themselves were much harder. This was something that I was aware would be the case, but I had decided that this would still be more accurate than trying to turn the mountboard over in the laser cutting and etching on the other side.
I hadn't added tabs to the net pieces to connect them together, but this was a deliberate decision. This was because I made a similar form last year using the same method, but adding tabs, and I found that the thickness of the mountboard, not accounted for in the model, posed some issues. My approach this time was to create joining pieces out of card, which fitted on top of the mountboard, bridging gaps between two faces in separate pieces.
Sketch of the chosen jointing method
Completed formwork before application to the bamboo forest
Overall, I found my method to be successful. On top of the formwork being a success in and of itself, it also fits well on top of the bamboos on the base, which shows that the Grasshopper and laser-cutting process as a whole has been successful.
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