Hello,

It is possible to develop a tool to generate cages from curves guides? in 1 or... 2 click, and management of angles.

For exemple: machine chassis, architectural structure.

See please the attach files.

Excellent day.

Antoine

Antoine, that is an excellent idea... I like that very much.

Edited below:



Antoine, that is an excellent idea... I like that very much.

Here's how it would be useful for structural design:

Being able to extrude multiple lines at once and tubes, pipes, or the like could be semi-scripted. I could say where my beams, columns, stanchions, webs, girders, stiffeners, and railing follow a path. I could draw the pathways/lines all in advance. Then, assign a "do" or an "ignore" tag and specify what has right-of-way, and specify that at intersections (with only "rudimentary" rules sets -- any more complicate that that and the price tag will have to go skyward), what kind of joint/welding treatment VCP/Shark will apply.

I think that there should be 2 options on HOW the actual drawing should occur.


1: For simple shapes and extrusions not on the order of huge (numerous skyscraper floors or multiple levels and spans of ship structures, or maybe nanostructures with tens of thousands of strands/filaments, etc.), VCP/Shark would just "do it" after selection of the parts and clicking on a "do it" type of button.

2: For complex, crowded, or such models, like extrusions that need to not only follow the path of a rail, but to also stay in watertight or welded contact with against a surface (say, sweeping/extruding stiffeners against the sideshell, or extruding heavy girders and lighter longitudinals or transverse girders along the bottom surface of a solid plate of the deck, then VCP/Shark should let the user "bucket collect" different items according to how they are part of an assembly or how they interact or collide/weld, etc. This would help the designer be more thoughtful and coordinated and further consider designing in more creative or visuals-oriented work -- case-depending.


Expanding on thought/option 2, it would be nice if we could externally (or, in VCP/Shark) create a table that has VCP/Shark-oriented rows/cells for controlling what the "cage" work will do. For example, if one has a schedule of pipes/structural material, the designer could draw the sticks/pipes/paths, then segment them if need be, then assign "quick attributes" to those segments, and if Tim and Team think it useful, have some basic (say, "not to exceed", "no less than" type of) constraints and drawing direction and so on. Then, when the designer says "do it", the cage work draws parts/subassemblies, and does so in a 2-mode undo manner. This would spare the user who draws in long sessions but forgets to periodically save. How this may be handy is like this: You draw/sweep/extrude "cages" according to a schedule of parts (in idea/option 2), but find something wrong. Rather than undoing a lot of good stuff, pop up a history tree module to select and correct the sweeping of something to be corrected. This might be how the current history tree works -- i don't know since i haven't taken advantage of the Concept Explorer for that feature.

It would be really nice if when the "cages" and other parts are drawn that they have their solid properties snapshot and dumped to a table and that this information be relational/associative. Then, as soon as the values are tabled, the solid is reduced to a semi-surface to get rid of the "payload" of having solids in the file.

Sorry for my long wording, and apologies if the translations engines cannot cope with my writing style.