Hi Michael,

I have tried the new Align to Surface option and think it's fantastic! It really makes MoI a lot
stronger for jewelry modeling, so if you can incorporate it into a Gem Array function that would be
wonderful.

>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?

For what we're talking about, a curve is always involved when arraying gemstones.
(gemstones positioned normal to the contours of a curvy surface).

For flat settings, you can just array the stones a certain distance from each other along a curve that's
sitting on a surface, using the surface only as a visual reference because you know the z height will be constant.

In Rhino, for arraying stones on rings, extracting an isocurve rather than projecting a hand drawn curve is used sometime
because it provides a path that conforms exactly to the shape of the channel that the stones are to be located in.

For other models that may have a curvy top surface but a flat back, ex. a pendant or broach, a construction curve can sometimes
be offset, flattened in Z and then projected to a surface to locate the path curve. (the rebuild curve function is invaluable in shaping and positioning these curves)

>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?

Yes, those would be the main parameters, but you could also include an offset distance relative to the surface, in case you wanted the stones to be buried into the surface a few fractions of a mm.

This is probably kind of "out there" but would it be possible to do something like a grid array but have the objects lay out on a curvy surface, positioned normal to the surface?


>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!

(I remember that in Rhino, sometimes the array would go all crazy because the area where the stones were being placed was actually a poly-surface , so we'd create a less complicated "dummy surface" in it's place, to align to).

I don't know if the model that I'm attaching is a great example, but I hope it will give you a better idea of how it should work. *

Ideally, I'd like to fill as much of the surface area as possible with a curved line of diamonds, so perhaps if you designated a starting size and an ending size, then select the path curve, the surface for alignment and the spacing... the stones could be graduated in size between them?
Even as I write this, I think it seems impossible...:-)

I will get a step-by-step description of the process from a friend who has Matrix.

Thanks,

Jesse

*(Side note: It was a challenge to position the original stone normal to the surface.. I ended up drawing a straight line normal to the surface and then moving the stone to the end of the line and then using construction lines as a guide, rotating it until it was tangent to the line and then moving it along the line until it looked like it was on the surface. Is there an easier way to position an object normal to a surface other than drawing it in place?)

Edit: After getting some sleep, I discovered this morning that using the Keep Cline script made it a lot easier to place the stone normal to the surface. I didn't need to draw a line. :-) -JDK