Hi Pilou,

> curves ordered on a line as like your animation, because here you have
> 10 lines but if 500? :)
> (like in a map of terrain levels)

Yes, that's actually the entire purpose of that script, to make it easier to handle a large number of items such as 500 lines.

You just use the same process shown there, select one + right click and repeat.

That's what is nice about that script, it allows you to arrange items with only 2 clicks in the same area of the screen for placing each one, it's much much faster than moving the mouse around to snap on to the base and target point for each item...

As you can see from the screencap, it only takes about 1 second (maybe even less) to place each item with this script helping you, so placing 500 items would be roughly 500 seconds of work = roughly 8 minutes of work instead of much longer than that...

I don't think there is much possibility for a script to automatically determine which pieces are supposed to go to which slots without selecting them though, that would require some kind of advanced pattern recognition or artifical intelligence for the script to analyze the curves and try and understand which one was supposed to be the next in the sequence. Sometimes there may be kind of "islands" where there are more than 1 thing that should go to the same slot as well.

The script is not meant to make 500 curves instantly go into place with one single click, you still have guide the process with selection but the script will help speed things up quite a lot compared to doing all the manual transformation steps that would otherwise be required.

Pilou, you're just too lazy and don't want to do any work at all! :)

- Michael

Hi Burr, yeah for just connecting 2 points just the line tool with 2 end snaps is already pretty quick for that.

An automated connection would start to become more useful if it was not just a "connect 2 lines" command on its own (which is pretty easy though, I can cook that up for you if you want, just let me know) but rather if it was some final step built into a batch operation.

But yeah the more difficult part is for the script to decide what to do with more than 2 points. Should it make a polyline? Should it try to group them into sets of 2 points that are closest to each other? That may be something that would be set up for a particular script targeting a specific situation (where it could make a better decision about what to do specifically) and probably not a very general purpose tool...

- Michael

You right :)

We will always that the computer makes all the work :)

Hi Angelo,

> What happens if I have the slices not all near the starting
> point and beneath the target point?

Well, it will be the same as if you used the "Move" command and used those 2 points as the base and target point for the Move.

Basically the distance between those 2 points is used as the distance to translate the curve.


> Let's say if I have a compressed target space? A space smaller them
> the space occupied by the unarranged slices?

Well, it's best if all the unarranged slices are on the same plane to start with, that makes it easy for the base point to be in that plane as well.

So that means all the unarranged slices would be at 0 distance between them already, so you can't get any smaller than that! :)

But you could adjust the points to have a different spacing in them, like do some scaling of different sections to compress or expand them. The script doesn't really care if the target points are evenly spaced or not, it just moves each slice to that furthest point location.

Please let me know if this doesn't make sense.

- Michael

Hi Angelo, also one other note - if you have a series of planes and you want to compress them back into a single plane, you can do that by using the "flat" snap with the edit frame scaling grip from a side view like this:








Also if your planes are angled so you can't easily get to a side view you can also use Transform / Scale / Scale1D which will allow you to pick 2 points to define the flattening direction, then type in a scale factor of 0 to flatten in that direction.

- Michael

About the plug seems that curves and points can be anywhere and selected in any order ;)

Hi Pilou,

> About the plug seems that curves and points can be
> anywhere and selected in any order ;)

Yes, that's true - but you will probably get hard to predict results with random placements.

The script is basically just a shortcut for doing a Transform/Move between the base point and target point.

Just as there are not any restrictions on where an object is located, or where the base or target points are in Transform/Move, there are similarly no limits for the script.

But to get the most expected behavior, you would probably want to have the curves stacked up in the same plane, and the base point located also in that same plane. That will make for a more predictable offset distance to be used for each one, just like Transform/Move can be easier to control if you snap the base point of a Transform/Move on to the object rather than way off in space somewhere.

- Michael

I was trying to visualize a command that had a choice of polyline, curve throughpoint etc. with a "tolerance" setting. The tolerance being distance to next point to continue or stop, creating a chain. I have heard a few requests before for some kind of "connector" tool, so I know you have it in scope. I can get what I need now other ways.

Just poking around.

Thanks again.

Hi Burr, that kind of sounds like the Import point file command that Petr made:

http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#ImportPointFile

I think that lets you build either a polyline, control point curve, or interpolated curve from the points read in. But I think it uses the points in the sequence they are found in the file and won't try to organize a big random set of them.

- Michael

Well I created points for the file. (Much easier than trying the trim) I loaded the points save and load commands from petr. I had a question about its use if petr is looking in.

I was hoping that there was a tolerance setting that would help control the polyline creation. There is a "decimal places" setting and I am not sure how to use this or if it is intended for this result. Could you expound?

With regards to a connector script, the point cloud looks like this:




But from the top, it is this:





If I could connect only points that are .125 apart, the tolerance setting, then this would work.

I suppose it would have to apply to ANY other interest in connecting "points" or even "Segment ends". Kindof like the extend with a Limitation setting. (and also working on points).

Anyway, enough about this now from me. I will try trimming in smaller batches to get the result I am looking for.

Burr

Hi Burr, I cooked up a plug-in command to handle that kind of tolerance based drawing of lines between selected points.

If you install and run the attached ConnectPoints command, it will let you select point objects, then prompt you for a tolerance value.

After you enter a tolerance, any of the points that are within that distance of one another will have a line generated between them.

That's not going to really work in all cases for doing a continuing chain of things (unless there is a very even spacing between the points), because there can be a kind of web of connections between points, but it should work for the kind of close together paired points like you have in this case.

- Michael

EDIT: updated ConnectPoints command to have a units designator on the tolerance field.

EDIT2: updated ConnectPoints command to remove selection from points that were not targeted for connection.

Thank you! I'll post back my results.

And Just to be sure, the tolerance setting is "distance"?

Hi Burr, yes it is the distance that is tested between points.

Any points that are under that distance from one another will have a line drawn between them.

It looks like I forgot to put a units designator in the UI for that field, I've updated the ConnectPoints.zip file in that previous message to have that now.

- Michael

Alrighty then!
I would like to ask if one last tweak would be possible for this command?

All points that get connected "stay selected" and anything that doesnt becomes "deselected".

Or vise versa, (preferably the former).

Working on this particular cloud, going too big right off will create the "web matrix" that we dont want. being able to get rid of the "just connected" points would be a huge plus to continue, leaving the ones that need further attn selected. Is this possible?

Hi Burr, sure that is an easy adjustment to make, I have updated the attachment in the previous message to have that now - points that were not targeted for connection should get deselected now. Let me know if that is not what you needed.

- Michael

In the same subject does exist a "points collapse" tollerance? (or this above make it also)
so 2 points become one

Thanks michael! This works perfectly. I easily created the segments betweent he 2 points (where the wire intersects the panels) which I could do a slot cut with my CNC. Here are a couple screen caps of a backplot and verification simulation from the CAM software.






I am still interested to know how angelo would benefit from having the holes produced in 3d? THough the Pipe command will work well with the segments created with this command also.




This is the rightmost pane cut using a profile toolpath on the segments, essentially making a "slot" if there is any angle. Unless he has access to a 5 axis machine??

Thanks again Michael,
Burr

Hi Pilou, no I don't think there is anything currently for collapsing points.

This new one is not for collapsing points, it is for drawing line segments in between points.

Is there some task in particular that you could use a method for collapsing points together for?

- Michael

Hi Burr you're welcome, I'm glad that helped.

> THough the Pipe command will work well with the segments
> created with this command also.

Yup, and actually having those straight cylinder pipes will be much, much lighter geometry (less dense with control points, etc...) than pipes that actually tried to follow along the curved paths. So that could help a lot to keep things more manageable, things like file size and memory consumption would not bloat up as much with these as the cutting objects.

Also maybe easier for actual assembly to have the holes be straight even if they are angled, rather than actually having sort of "bending holes" ?

- Michael