Bob Wagner

You could try using my unfold plugins. http://vectorwiki.org/index.php?title=Geometry_Plug-ins Unfolding

Careful, Julian may just take up the stair challenge. He also brought us the Animationworks tools.

Charles has already put it on the wiki site http://www.vectorwiki.org/index.php?title=Geometry_Plug-ins

Download these from http://www.vectorwiki.org/index.php?title=Geometry_Plug-ins Bob and thanks Charles

Is the only way to dimension Circles on a 3D model to draw a 2D circle in the Annotate window then add the Dimension, then center lines. If so I feel a one step plugin coming on. Bob Wagner

Mike m oz has the same solution as me almost...I would try converting your profiles to NURBS then moving them in 3D space, then lofting. Doing this has gotten me out of a lot of problem modelling. Bob

Try my unfolding plugins. http://www.vectorwiki.org/index.php?title=Geometry_Plug-ins Bob Wagner

My interest has been rekindled again. I have by accident found a workaround in VW 12.5 which overcomes the problem I had when I went from 10.5 to 12.5. If anyone is interested - my code is rough but it works for most of the simple transition pieces, truncated pyramids etc that I have thrown at them. I have 3 plugins. 1. 3D Poly-Ungroup - this coverts your objects into 3D Polygons 2. Unfold3DPolygon Reorder - This orders the triangles so that they all connect continuously. You have the choice of which triangle to start with ( Biggest is default) 3. Unfold3DPolygon Triangles -You should have a solution. my email: b.wagner@ozemail.com.au

Have just made a discovery in 12.5.3 that has helped me solve a problem that occured when going from 10.5 to 12.5 So If anyone is interested email me.

I have wanted this for ages and have actually created 2 plugins to do this. However I am a self made programmer and so my plugins are a little limited. I have taken to exporting my models in 3DS format then opening them in Pepakura to do the unfolding. If you want to try my plugins you are welcome. just email me b.wagner@ozemail.com.au

Has anyone done any animation stuff in VWScript? Besides the talented Julian. part of our Graphics Syllabus is a section on locii. The tracking of a point through space like tracking the path of the valve on a car tire. Pretty good fun if you are easily amused. I wrote a plugin a few years ago that creates the path. This week I have decided to animate the wheel ( like the examples - crank and gears in the Goodies folder in VW). I have stayed with a plugin that allows you to change the diameters of the wheel and value point etc. The only problem I have is when the animation occurs it always occurs on the screen at world coordinates of (0,0) and rotation of 0. If you place the plugin object anywhere else if works fine- except for the animation which takes place at (0,0). Bob Wagner

I use TextPad on the PC. It took me 10-20 minutes to create a file that gave me syntax colouring and line numbering. NotePAD2 is also good as it doesnt need to install on your harddrive, you can run it from your USB stick - good for portability. Syntax colouring can be done here also but requires a compiler but at least you get line numbering.

Thanks for this. However I already an cope with this, the problem is actually dividing the big polygon into the individual triangles. Number of sides -2, is how many triangles minimum needed. however you have to check for turns left and right and check it the triangle actually formed is in the original polygon etc. Bob

Go to Vector Depot http://www.vectordepot.com/plug-ins/ and download my fastener plugin. Works fine in mm. Should be fine in inches as well.

Does anyone have in their collection of code an algorithm to triangulate a 3D polygon. In version 10.5, I did this by Converting to Nurbs then converting to 3Dpolys. This doesn't work in 12.5, not unless you choose each nurb surface and set its U and V value to 2. This I haven't worked out how to do in a plugin. At the moment I export as 3DS and re-import the 3Ds file. This might be ok for now but not what I really want. Why do this you ask? Well I have my unfolding working pretty well, but it all requires a model to be triangulated.