Hi Angelo, also be prepared that creating such a large number of tubular surfaces may eat up a large amount of memory, so that is something you may need to watch out for.

You may need to work on each slab in separate batches or something like that.

Also by default MoI is set to display objects with a dense display mesh which makes for a nice smooth looking display but also eats up quite a bit of memory.

You should probably adjust the display mesh setting to be rougher before you create a large number of tubes. To do that, go to Options / View / Meshing parameters, and change the "Mesh angle" parameter to 25 degrees, and uncheck "Add detail to inflections".

That will make for a somewhat rougher and jagged looking display of curved surfaces, but it will also reduce memory consumption by a lot.

Even with that, still be prepared to possibly run into memory / density issues with creating such a complex piped structure though.

- Michael

Hi Angelo, just one other note - that Pipe command will be useful for making tubes around many curves but it is also not very friendly as far as being able to interrupt the process while it is chugging away.

So you probably should use it on one simple curve piece to start with so you can figure out what radius would be good to use, and then do a bigger batch after that.

It looks like many of your larger curves have tight bends and sharp corners in them in different areas, that will probably make some of them not suitable for piping directly, but if you trim things down to smaller pieces just near the slab like I showed earlier that will likely give you a much better shot.

You're still probably going to have some difficulties with some of the more complex pieces that may have many corners, segments, or tight bends in them.

It's possible that for some complex pieces you may need to make an approximation of the hole by drawing in a cylinder aligned with the tangent of the curve where it intersects the median plane of your slab.

- Michael

Looks like a great project for the new Scene Browser to work in managable sections!

Hi Michael, thank you for your quickly replay (on a holiday!) and let me tell you how impressed I am with the accuracy and sympathetic attention to a project strange to your "surroundings". Seems like we are sat to the same table working together with a lot of previous common experiences. I'm really impressed!

About distribute: I was doing exactly what you suggested but sometimes (when you have a big bunch of objects) a distribute command could be easier. I think this is uncommon in the CAD area, more related to 2D vector drawing apps.

I remember to see this pipe plugin somewhere in the forum when I was learning MOI, time to try!

I was a sculptor in a quite old way, I mean, I'm not a digital artist but computer is one of the tools of my toolbox, a tool I use a lot from a long time (89). Your app is fantastic as retain some freshness of the connection between mind and hand. And is so funny that a mac user like me found this beautiful tool in the Windows area.

As soon I have some good results I'll post here.

"E grazie tante a Paolo per l'amabile aiuto!"

Angelo

Such fonction don't exist? Maybe must be add to the Array Transform?
(or just between 2 curves)

Seems you can yet make easily planar forms :)
Then make Shell

So possibility to intersect with your perpendicular plexiglass rectangles

But I don't very well understand what must be the final result?
A ropes skull?
Have you an example of such thing?



PS With the Browser does it possible to select only open curves (after the planar automatic function)
On the drawing above there are some open curves (for close it manually or with other method)

And there is not inverse selection inside the Browser? (Because I have found how see only the surface :)

Hi Pilou,

> Such fonction don't exist? Maybe must be add to the Array Transform?

No, there's not any function for what you are showing there.

That's basically a 2-rail sweep.

In the future here at some point I'll have an "extract isoparm" command which would make it possible to build a 2-rail sweep surface and then extract some curves from that surface.

That will probably be the way to achieve that in the future.

But I don't believe what you are showing there is related to Angelo's problem though.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> PS With the Browser does it possible to select only open
> curves (after the planar automatic function)

No, not currently. I do have some ideas for making additional kinds
of "filters" to allow for things like that.

But it is possible to select all open curves by use of a keyboard shortcut
script, put the following on a shortcut key for that:

script:var curves = moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getCurves(); for ( var i = 0; i < curves.length; ++i ) if ( !curves.item(i).isClosed ) curves.item(i).selected = true;

> And there is not inverse selection inside the Browser? (Because I
> have found how see only the surface :)

It's possible to deselect the objects for a browser item by holding
down Ctrl and clicking on the browser item's text.

Also right-clicking on a browser item's text will do an
"isolate selection", where that item becomes the only selected
item and everything else is deselected. This can be useful if you
want to set one item as the only selected object with a single click.

- Michael

< But I don't believe what you are showing there is related to Angelo's problem though.
If a "multi sweep array"(?) exist it will very easy to have the all quadrangular mesh with the parallel curves given
Then make some intersections after with the Plexi rectangles

But i don't visualize what must be the final result :)

Hi Pilou,

> If a "multi sweep"(?) exist it will very easy to have the all
> quadrangular mesh with the parallel curves given
> Then make some intersections after with the Plexi rectangles

Sorry, I don't understand this one...

If you want to do a "multi-sweep" as a method of creating a surface, you can use the Network command for that kind of thing, it allows for a crossing network of curves and is not limited to only 1 or 2 rails like sweep is.

But if you are talking about replicating curves across an area, I don't think that will help for this particular case. As far as I understand the problem, Angelo is trying to create holes similar to this:




But instead of straight holes, the hole should actually follow the contour and angle of the wire. So to do that surfaces must be created to intersect with the slabs.

- Michael

I was wondering if you had considered this type of plane layout?



since you know the spacing, you could put a temporary grid on the plexy then use MoI to cut your curves down the middle and place each side seperatly. It didnt sound like you were going to automate the task of drilling?

There would be a couple smaller inner horizontal planes to accomodate the upper and lower pieces but seems like it would work. Trying to visualize though.

Hi Angelo, it's always fun for me to see interesting things being done with MoI!


> About distribute: I was doing exactly what you suggested
> but sometimes (when you have a big bunch of objects) a
> distribute command could be easier. I think this is uncommon
> in the CAD area, more related to 2D vector drawing apps.

Yeah, this is not commonly found in CAD programs.

But I do like to have elements from 2D vector apps combined into MoI as well, and I have been gradually adding some things from that area into MoI over time.

One pretty big one for MoI v2 was the inclusion of a bounding edit frame so that you could quickly scale or rotate objects by grabbing grips on the bounding box around the selected objects, similar to how 2D vector drawing apps work.

Some kinds of 2D vector operations can be more difficult to fit in to function with 3D objects though, and also it can be difficult to add in the element of accurate placement which is usually a focus for MoI.

Were you looking for a distribute function as way to arrange parallel planar objects?

- Michael

Ok I see :)
You can easily have the result but with "box hole" against "cylinder hole" ;)

Replace Rectangular "Plexiglass box" by rectangular Plan

Close all curves

Select all curves lines closed, Extrude them on the longitudinal side by the measure that you want hole (so a little measure)

Select all volumes result and make a Copie /Size

Make boolean Diff between them

Make Boolean Diff Plexi Glass with result above

Extrude Plexi Glass = you have your result wanted : just Fillet if you want a more smooth result ;)

Hi Pilou, sorry that previous image I showed was simplified to get the idea across.

If I understand correctly, the other problem is that some pieces will be coming in to the slab at an angle, like this for example:



So it is desired to have an angled hole for those cases, like this:



That seems to be what Angelo was looking for.

- Michael

aaaah new difficulties :)

All depend in what material are the links!
If it's rope it's not necessary to have your forms :)
And my method works

if not my method don't works :)
Some infos are necessary :)

PS My method above works also just don't replace at the beginning the Plexiglass by a plan but keep it :)
Of course holes wille be as the Boolean Diff will give the result so maybe little complex holes :)

Hi Michael.

>Were you looking for a distribute function as way to arrange parallel planar objects?

Yes, if I have around 15-20 objects this could be achieved with Array plus some snap to object
but with more then hundred objects a distribute function could be a must.

Angelo

Also it seems as though all the curves are slightly rotated about the Z axis. It makes many things difficult. I wonder if a cplane could work for this?

Hi Pilou, thank you for all the strugle.

I attached some photos from old pieces only to show how I've been working with "slices".

This skull from 1996 was made with iron wire glued over glass slices, the MOI piece will be constructed also with wire but with 160 planes and not 11 as this one. If I use glass planes as support the transparency disappears, 160 slices would be a green opaque block of glass. So... I think of "sew" the wires trough plexiglass planes, these planes will be drilled on a router with the drawing that I'm trying to produce with the help of MOI. (this was the worst English phrase of the day!)
Another piece uses glass panels with salt stain (actually crystalized salted water).
And there is a self-portrait made of MDF cuts.

Thank you for now (time to sleep).

In fact this is a kind of error, I think the model inherited some misplacement when the MRI was done.
How do you think the cplane could help?

Hi Angelo, re: distribute to arrange parallel planar objects

Do you also mean having a initial starting position with all those objects in one single plane?

If so, then I don't really know how I could accomplish that very easily, since there would not be any really straightforward method for a piece of code to automatically recognize how to assign an ordering to all those pieces.

It would probably take some kind of sophisticated artificial intelligence or pattern recognition or something along those lines...

- Michael