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View Full Version : Spline Projection - (plug needed)

MarcCG
09-02-2008, 07:43 PM
hi,

am looking to see if anyone knows of a plug-in that would allow me to project the points of a spline along its own axis onto geometry. Trying to find the intersections between cylinders so I can create realistic looking welds between tubes - boolean does this but makes a hell of a mess!

This doesn't seem to be possible using the available options in the standard spline projection tool. And whats the deal with picking up the geometry furthest from the spline if more than one solution is possible! I want the closest damn it!

I guess one way around it is to create a camera and transfer the position and rotation of this to the spline and use the view projection, but its a serious pain when there are so many splines to project.
tcastudios
09-02-2008, 07:58 PM
Go www.3d-meier.de -> Plugins -> Geometrische Durchdringungen.

There you have all sorts of solutions for great Cylinder/Cylinder connections.
It Coffee, so it works in R11 as well as it looks, just did a brief check and it looked fine.

Cheers
Lennart
mikeh64
09-02-2008, 08:01 PM
make a copy of your cylinders and place them into a boole
make your boole object editable
select one of the cylinders
go into edge mode, then the selection>loop selection tool (and check the "select boundary loop" option)
choose the intersection edge loop
with that selected, choose "edge to spline"

you will have a spline the is in the exact position of your intersection
Per-Anders
09-02-2008, 08:03 PM
Spherical projection in the Project tool does what you want. You can also use the MOCCA Shrinkwrap deformer for this. If you're getting messy booleans I'd suggest selecting the "Hide new edges" option to help visibility, this wont help the bevel itself though which is doesn't know how to handle situations with converging edges for instance, however if you just want a spline then the "select edges" option in the boolean followed by a "Edge to Spline" call will result in a much cleaner result than trying to project a spline onto a complex form.
MarcCG
09-02-2008, 08:52 PM
Go www.3d-meier.de (http://www.3d-meier.de) -> Plugins -> Geometrische Durchdringungen.

There you have all sorts of solutions for great Cylinder/Cylinder connections.
It Coffee, so it works in R11 as well as it looks, just did a brief check and it looked fine.

Cheers
Lennart

Cheers, thats what I need albeit in a different manner of doing it!

shame I dont quite understand the math of it, or the german, but I got it to work!
MarcCG
09-02-2008, 08:58 PM
Spherical projection in the Project tool does what you want. You can also use the MOCCA Shrinkwrap deformer for this. If you're getting messy booleans I'd suggest selecting the "Hide new edges" option to help visibility, this wont help the bevel itself though which is doesn't know how to handle situations with converging edges for instance, however if you just want a spline then the "select edges" option in the boolean followed by a "Edge to Spline" call will result in a much cleaner result than trying to project a spline onto a complex form.

spherical projection does that? I cant get it to work, it just shrinks my spline towards the spline axis and not along a direction of the spline axis
MarcCG
09-02-2008, 10:34 PM
well this is the effect im trying to achieve, needs a bit more tweaking....
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