For using Sweep, it should work to do 3 individual sweeps each time using this same one rail:



Select one circle, run Construct > Sweep, select the rail.

Select the next circle, run sweep again, select the same rail.

Select the last circle, run sweep again, select the same rail again.

- Michael

In Right view, you could also try Offsetting the outer curve that you've drawn, to the middle and inner positions. This gives a slightly different result to the one that Michael's last answer gives.

Martin.

Hello,

Thanks for all of the suggestions. The larger issue I'm running into at the moment is stacking the pipes into a matrix, e.g. 3x3. The rows stay pretty good in terms of clearance but the pipe stack rows end up intersecting with one another badly which is a little puzzling to me unless this just has to do with me using the wrong tool to keep things separated. Is it fair to say the blend curve tool will not keep the center rail curves equidistant from one another so the swept circle profiles will intersect? Thanks.

Hi OSTexo,

Is the attached file what you want, or does it have the intersections you're talking about? I made this by doing Construct > Offset with Mode = Through Point. The selected object was the rail that already had the blend in it. The point that I picked was on one of the straight stubs that hadn't been blended yet.

But, making the matrix of pipes straight like with Extrude and then doing curve to curve flow like Michael suggested should also work pretty well for keeping clearance between the pipes. The only problem I've had with that approach is that for really long skinny things like wires the cross section can end up out-of-round.

- Peer

Hi OSTexo,

re:
> Is it fair to say the blend curve tool will not keep the center rail curves equidistant from one another so the
> swept circle profiles will intersect?

That's correct, Blend curves generated between different curves will not be guaranteed to be equidistant from some other previously generated blend curve.

So instead of using blend multiple times the other solutions discussed above in this thread are:

- Use the same one common rail for generating all the sweeps instead of making individual rails for each sweep.

or

- Use Transform > Deform > Flow to deform a full block of pipes all at once.

or

- Use blend on one piece, and then for the other rails do a Construct > Offset on the Blend instead of making separate individual Blends.

- Michael