Yes BurrMan,

Using Autoplace works well, and will provide the fastest solution.
I can't quite remember why I needed the profiles to "match up", but adding the profile copies is what solved whatever it was.

I know that one object I had was to make the cord look more natural, especially in the tight-radius turn areas, where the Autoplace would overlap or collide result geometry.
And I tweaked the position of some of the profiles to get a natural looking placement.

Nice result on the model Burr. :-)




Notice though, even in your example, you can see where Sweep provided that particular result as it tries to negotiate auto-profile to auto-profile.
The thing tends to twist around a lot in the result.
I don't know about your model, but when I tried it, I had a lot of this creasing stuff where a corner would become a top and a side would become a corner and so forth - with lots of uneven creasing going on.

If a cord like this looks clean in the final render, then Autoplace is the way to go. Would a UV texture unwrapper do a good job with this. (not sure).
But with this point being made, it's nice to have multiple options to accomplish a task.

Autoplace just takes a profile curve that's flat on the cplane and moves and rotates it so that it's perpendicular to the start tangent of the rail. Then after that it's the same thing as doing a sweep with just one profile at the start of the rail.

Then the main thing that will govern a long sweep that uses just 1 profile is the twist behavior for how the profile rotates as it travels along the rail.

The default freeform twist gradually banks the profile as it travels along the path. If you set twist = flat you can then set a direction and the profile will be constrained to only rotate around that particular direction as it travels along the path instead of banking more freely.

If neither of those gives you the kind of banking behavior that you need, then you may need to fill in a bunch of profiles like this to more specifically control it. I guess in this case you would want a similar kind of constraint as the twist=flat but instead of it being in just one constant direction it would be constrained to the tangent of the centerline curve.

- Michael

Hi Burr - are you also using sweep on the 3D curve there or only doing a sweep on the straight one and then a Flow to put that onto the curved one?

- Michael

Hi,
No, I did the sweep with the profile on the helix, with a flat setting, then I would flow it to the 3d curve. If I left the original 3d curve cord in, it was untouched by be. My picture is just the helix sweep. But Majik reminded me of his original thread that prompted him to control it with multiple, exact placed profiles... I didnt check the entire sweep for those other errors, so I assmee'd... :o

But your effort, Burr, reminds us of the versatility of MoI, and it's ability to work around many challenges.

Michaels new plug-in script 10 years from now?

The "fix that for me" button... lol

haha.. fantastic