Hi Chipp,

re:
> Michael, perhaps you can weigh in on this one. Would a blend using the above manual fillet
> (http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4607.5) technique benefit from a rebuld
> for the originating path spline-- or does it even matter?

You mean building a pipe surface using a one rail sweep?

For a sweep the number of control points in the rail does not directly have much to do with the generated sweep - sweep adds in profiles until the sweep surface matches the procedural sweep to within 0.001 tolerance. It's an iterative refinement process, the rail curve's control point structure doesn't directly relate to the generated sweep.

If the rail curve has very uneven parameterization, that case might be good for doing a refit of the rail curve first.

But if you say have a rail curve with 5 control points and one with 500 control points both with the same shape and parameterization they will both give the same sweep result, the 500 control point one does not automatically mean you'll have a more complex sweep unless it is also at the same time a lot more wiggly in shape than the 5 control point one.

Not sure if that answers your question or not...

For some other construction methods like extrude it's a different case, for extrusion the generated extrude surface does directly inherit the structure of the input curve.

- Michael