Hi Barry,

WOW, you're really cooking with gas! ;-}

Here's some more background on what I was initially setting out to accomplish. Again, this is intended to roughly simulate bending metal in the real world. In designing a bend one of the key things to keep track of is how the material deforms as a result of the bend. You've got the centerline and thickness/diameter modeled, but what is needed to is to adjust the length of the straight portions of the centerline as the bend progresses & this is mainly done by subtracting the length of the arc that forms on the bottom of the top die. The change from Bend Tool to Bend Tool Plus made the centerline two independent "arms" if you will, but to approximate reality, it ought to be a single line of a fixed length. Maybe I've already described this well enough, but to put it another way: the length of each straight arm is reduced by a portion of the arc's length. Since the top die does not need to be in the center, the portion of the arc is not half but varies depending on which bottom die is closer.

I can't get my head wrapped around how to create nodes, but my hat is off to you for doing so. Because I enjoy making things and for my own education, I will continue to pursue this as a MoI script, but I strongly suspect your new node will be quite handy for those of us who fool with bending things. Well done Sir!

--Larry

Hi Larry,
try this version.
Set the bar datum to the left and bar length.
When bent the bar length should be maintained and a curve length value is used as a check.
Cheers
Barry

Hi Barry,

You nailed it! Now you're going to be guilty of encouraging a bunch of folks to try their hand at bending some metal.

--Larry