Another approach would be arraying them (both prongs and gems) along a representative created uv surface and flowing everything back to the original surface as is currently done in Rhino. BUT there is the distortion thing that must be overcome.
I'm a big fan of flow along surface.

David

Hi Michael,

This is the part I'm not sure about. It would seem that the distance along curve would only give you so much accuracy when the array is aligned
to a surface. However, the area of the stone (that needs to be spaced correctly) which is most critical is the "girdle" which is the widest circumference
where the top and bottom facets meet on the sides. So if a circle was grouped to the stone there, that might do the trick.. So if it was the closest points on circles grouped to the stone, that might work. In Rhino I remember grouping a point that was placed at the right level inside the stone to line things up for an array, so that might be another option.

As for prong placement that's going to be a tough one because when the curvature of the path curve changes, so does the spacing. I do it manually, creating some 3d scaffolding by offsetting curves and finding intersections and then copying and pasting circles to mid-points of lines I've drawn.
In this example, you'd need to change the diameter of the prongs just a little, making them smaller or larger or move them in or out a tiny bit, where ever the bend in the curve bows out or curves in more radically, so they (the prongs) cover the stone properly, so it's never an exact science. You kinda do whatever works while trying to fool the eye into thinking it's more uniform than it really is.

Jesse

Hi David,

> The array along curve with normals to surface is a wonderful
> idea. I feel that at this juncture, perhaps, it is prudent to look
> ahead a little. The next step, of course, is to add prongs into
> the mix.

Are the stone placement and prong placement intertwined with one another?

I mean for example, would you want to move a stone to a different position in order to accomodate a prong? Or are the prongs something that are meant to always fit around the stone placement and not require altering the stone placement?

If it's more that the stones are the "primary" thing and prongs only accomodate them, then I'd like at the beginning anyway to focus only on placing the stones for a bit and see if I can actually make something for that as a starting point or not.

I don't really know very much about jewelry so it's a fairly tough area for me to work in, there is a lot of stuff to absorb and I'm not very confident about trying to accomplish too much all at once. So if I can focus on things one step at a time that is probably going to be how I could possibly make some progress.

- Michael

Hi Burr,

> So it seems that Michael, laying out a "prebuilt size grid",
> then choose the size that fits the stones to be used in the
> array, would be more viable.

I don't know - possibly...

That's the kind of detail that I'm hoping to learn about from people involved with jewelry. It's hard to guess at what they might want, I'm hoping that they will be able to tell me in more specific detail what they need so I don't have to guess and get it wrong or go through too many iterations of changing the tool to do different things.

- Michael

Hi Jesse,

> The multiple base circle idea sounds like it might
> work. Would you be able to create your own circles and
> designate them as Object 1, 2, 3, etc?

Yeah, you would just create your own circles by the regular Draw curve / Circle command.

They'd be designated as Object 1, 2, 3 just by their left-to-right ordering, like the circle all the way on the left would be "Object 1", the one immediately to it's right would be "Object 2", and so forth.

So you would draw these circles on to the Top plane, and just arrange them in left to right order to control the sizing.

- Michael

Hi David,

> Another approach would be arraying them (both
> prongs and gems) along a representative created
> uv surface and flowing everything back to the original
> surface as is currently done in Rhino.

I thought a bit about this, that maybe you would arrange things all along a line initially and then have the command take the spacing exactly from that 2D arrangement and try to place it along the curve.

But Jesse was describing originally about wanting to be able to control the spacing in between items as a parameter to the command so you could adjust it to different values.

- Michael

Hi Jesse,

> However, the area of the stone (that needs to be spaced correctly)
> which is most critical is the "girdle" which is the widest circumference
> where the top and bottom facets meet on the sides.

That's kind of what I was figuring - that method of spacing the "shortest line between each circle" would most closely follow this I think, because you would place each circle as a model of that "girdle" that you are talking about.

The path curve is kind of an imaginary thing once the final piece is built, right? So I was thinking that trying to make equal distances "as traveled along the curve" would probably not be what you would be focused on for the actual result.


Re: Prongs - the prong stuff must also get complicated when you have changes in size happening? Do the prongs also change in size when that happens?


If you can come up with a simple rule for how the prong placement would work, that could make it possible to also include. From your drawing it looks like something along the lines of "take the midpoint of the line between 2 circles and travel along that line's perpendicular by a certain distance" to place a prong. If the distance to offset along the perpendicular could be automatically calculated based off of the size of the 2 stones that would be good.

- Michael

3034.41 In reply to 3034.36
Hi David,

> Another approach would be arraying them (both
> prongs and gems) along a representative created
> uv surface and flowing everything back to the original
> surface as is currently done in Rhino.

I thought a bit about this, that maybe you would arrange things all along a line initially and then have the command take the spacing exactly from that 2D arrangement and try to place it along the curve.

But Jesse was describing originally about wanting to be able to control the spacing in between items as a parameter to the command so you could adjust it to different values.

- Michael

******************************************************************************
Michael

One could make a center line within the surface and have the stones follow the center line. The width of the stones could imply additional lines on either side of the center line which would be attached to the prongs. 2D works fine for me, as your going to get exactly what you lay out. What Jesse was talking about works too. Basically it ends up with what is the best or most efficient way to program the process so that it works correctly and doesn't impact other functions. When you sit down and give this some thought there are many scenarios by which this could be accomplished...none of them wrong. It's the end result that counts.

Currently, (I use Matrix/Rhino) I will sometimes use the builders to generate prongs and get them close to where I want them, and then group and rearrange what works. I find that many times I kill off one side than arrange the other side of the prongs exactly the way that I want them and then mirror.

No matter which way you make it work people will use it in a manner in which works for THEM and with which they feel comfortable. I know that the newer users of Matrix freak out when a builder doesn't give them what they want. They know no other way in which to work but with the builder. Older users, or pure Rhino users don't have that problem because they don't have to rely on builders to get what they want. It may require a little more thought and some effort but they are not dead in the water.

David

Hi David, yup that is always a problem when people are totally dependent on things like "wizards" that build things automatically for them. If you get into a situation where the wizard/guided-steps type thing is not able to do something then they get hosed.

It does tend to be better to be able to do things manually but then also have a wizardy type thing optionally available to you so you can save time in situations that it does handle well.


> 2D works fine for me, as your going to get exactly what you lay out.

I guess the part that does not seem quite so good with that, is that it is not so easily tweakable by just changing a number parameter for instance. It would put some more burden on you to completely edit the 2D pattern (made of multiple objects) to adjust things.


> It's the end result that counts.

True, but if there is a way that gives you somewhat easier ways to experiment and tweak things really quickly then that can be helpful too...


- Michael

Hi Michael,

That's what I was thinking too.. the closest point between circles that represent the girdles of the stones.

Yup, the path curve is imaginary.. it's just used as a path for the array.

Your idea about using a perpendicular line stemming out from the closest point between two circles
would probably work well for stones along a straight or nearly straight path curve, (in fact I've done it that way before)
but I'm not sure about how it'd work for placing prongs along stones on a path curve with wide or tight bends..
I'm not on a computer with MoI right now, so I'll have to check that idea out later.

So if it used the two different-in-diameter circles to calculate an offset along a perpendicular line from a line drawn between the closest points of those circles,
would it replicate the same placement as you would if you took into account the curvature of the array?

I used the midpoint of a line I drew between the intersections of the two circles
and an offset parallel path curve, but that method entails too much user intervention to effectively automate, I would think.

Thanks,
Jesse

Hi Michael,

>So you would draw these circles on to the Top plane, and just arrange them in left to right order to control the sizing.


That seems like a simple and effective strategy.

Jesse

Hi Michael,

>Hi David, yup that is always a problem when people are totally dependent on things like "wizards" that build things automatically for them. If you get into a situation where the wizard/guided-steps type thing is not able to do something then they get hosed.

David's experience with Matrix might serve as a cautionary example.

After several years of customized macros, scripts and even programming specific code for Rhino to do jewelry design,
there are still some things that go kaflooey and have to be tweaked manually in order to get them right.


>True, but if there is a way that gives you somewhat easier ways to experiment and tweak things really quickly then that can be helpful too...


Yep, having a system that automates certain functions can be a good thing if it takes into account that not everything can be automated. :-)

Not sure if I understand correctly about laying out 2d patterns, wouldn't you get some stretching and distortion when the curves slap down on the surface?
ArtCAM has a Z Height Distortion compensation tool that you have to apply to each closed curve so they don't get bent out of shape, but that's rather tedious
if you have a lot of stones and prongs.

Jesse

Hi Michael,

I thought this might be worth looking at again.

The next development of ArraycrvPlus is online.

http://jarek-rhinoscripts.blogspot.com/search/label/Armadillo

A section showing spacing modes shows how it does consistent spacing
of varying sized objects.

Jesse

Hi Jesse,

I didn't follow the whole threat but maybe this is what you are looking for:

http://sites.google.com/site/smart3dnet/

With this Rhino plugin you place the stones manually,and the system
detects if the virtual stone bounces with it's neighbours.

There's no demo but they give you online help.

Hi Jesse,


No, I guess not - the prong location would be more following just the line between 2 circles and not necessarily on the offset of the path curve.

It's more like it would be on the offset of a polyline going through the circle centers.

But I guess if your array was dense enough that there was not a lot of change in the path curve between each item it would be pretty close to the same thing.


Yeah an automated tool needs to have some relatively simple rules that it follows to generate the stuff.

It can't really do stuff like "just make the spacing look good" or something that requires judgment like that, it has to have the mechanics for how it works really nailed down.


Is there ever a case where you would move stones around in order to accomodate the location of a prong?

If not (if you always want to have the stone placement be primary), then I will probably focus on just the stone placement initially and see if it is possible to nail that down first before worrying about prongs.

- Michael

Hi Jesse,

> Not sure if I understand correctly about laying out 2d
> patterns, wouldn't you get some stretching and distortion
> when the curves slap down on the surface?

Well, what I was thinking about was not such a literal "morphing" of the 2D pattern, but rather just using the 2D pattern to control the spacing between items.

Remember when I was talking about using several circles in left-to-right order to control the sizes of each generated item (when you did not want just a single size for each stone) ? Well, it would also be possible to use the spacing between each of those circles to control the spacing of each generated item in the array as well.

Each array item would still be placed by a "rigid body" transform of moving and rotating it into place rather than squishing it like Flow does though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for your follow up to my questions...
In regards to arraying prongs, the prongs always follow stone placement and never the other way around.
For this type of stone setting, most of the time we want side-by side stones to share a prong on each
side so you have the stones laid out as close as possible to each other along the path curve on a surface
with just enough room for prongs to hold the stones in securely without too much metal showing.
So the prongs need to be just large enough, but not so large that they would obscure the stone
at all.

Jesse

Hi Michael,

I may have posted something confusing in my comment about David's idea of using 2d curves to lay out a pattern.
I understand that the 2d circles would only be used to determine the spacing and size.

Jesse

Hi Paolo,

Thanks.. I took a look at it.. seems like an effective tool to customize Rhino
to do some jewelry specific modeling operations..I'm hoping Michael
can implement a few tools in MoI that will do similar things. :-)
Have you used Smart3d?

Jesse

Hi Jesse,

I proposed it to my colleague, expert modelist in the company where i work.
For years he was searcing for a program that does stonesetting in a traditional way.
I myself am not an expert of stonesetting.

It's not a miracle program but it saves you a lot of time because the only thing you have to do is to place the stones according to your experience.
The making of holes is special because the virtual dril shape is variable depending on your needs.

The programmer himself has livetime experience in stonesetting(Pavee) and decided to change his job,and produced this product.
They are working on a automatic version.


Here is a link to see some other opinions:
http://www.rhino3d.com/resources/display.asp?language=&listing=4613