Hi Jesse,

> But... could the object's "normal" relationship to
> the surface still be maintained?

Yeah, that's probably doable, did you see the previous link to the new "Align to surface" function for MoI's regular array curve function? (here) - does that do what you are talking about here? If so then it would be possible to do the same thing.

Does this kind of "Gem Array" function always involve a surface and a curve 100% of the time, or are there situations where you want to do something on a curve only and no surface is involved yet?


> Could the objects be uniform in size as well as graduated
> in size? A lot of times, the stones will be the same size.

Well, they could if that would be how it is supposed to work!

I'm just trying to gather information on how you would expect for this kind of thing to function.

The more exactly you can describe how it is supposed to work, with specifics like what inputs are required and what options are required, etc..., the more chance I have of actually being able to make it work at some point.


> Right now, we work with the diameter of the stones and the
> length of the curve to determine the spacing of uniform objects.

So are those the parameters that you would expect to give - a diameter value and a spacing and a curve for the path, and a surface for alignment?


> I'll dig up a model as an example to send to you.

That would be great, it helps a lot for me to see an actual example of how it is supposed to work.


> I hope you don't think I'm asking for too much... :-)

I don't know yet, I still don't entirely understand exactly how it is supposed to work yet, so before I actually know that I won't really know if it is a hard thing to do or an easy thing to do.

The more information you can give me on what parameters you want to give it, what stages you would expect for the command to have (like an "pick path curve step", a "enter diameter step", stuff like that), and examples of results would all help!

It's pretty clear though that it would be a special kind of "GemArray" function and not likely something that was built directly in to the standard array. That's because it seems like it is focused on a particular shaped object that has a circular/diameter type aspect to the shape rather than just any old random shape like a box or whatever.

- Michael