Duplicate along path - Nurbs 3D

[Stefan B.]

I have a nurbs curve, is it any way to duplicate a extruded rectangle perpendicular to the nurbs curve and keep the extrusion "flat"? I would like the extrude to "fan" out in the curves, but stay horizontal along the whole path. If i select nothing on center, or tangent, my extrude keeps flat as i want, but it does not "fan". If i select tangent, then the extrude tangents along what seams to be up or down on the nurbs curve. If i select options Tangent and keep orientation, i get what i want but all the extrudes rotate one end in the Z axis. There is not really any change if I convert the nurbs to a 3D polyline.

 

 

I would like it to keep flat as it does on a flat line... 😄

 

 

Edited March 12 by Stefan B.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Hi Stefan,  I don't really understand what you are asking, but I would imagine there is a solution.  Can you post a mocked up picture of what kind of end result you want and perhaps post the curves.

 

I suspect the problem lies with the orientation of the rectangle.  Try rotating the rectangle 90 degrees and see what changes.  You may have to rotate it in a few different aspects.

 

[Stefan B.]

I'm sorry for my bad explanation! I'll give it another try.

 

File of the extrude and path attached.

 

I have a 3D nurbs curve and one extrude. In the image below the two on the left have the same Duplicate along path setting. The left is on a poly line made from Convert copy to polygons the middle on a nurbs curve. The left one is the result I'm after on the Nurbs but without the staggering due to the low segments on the poly line. I thought that I could solve this via the polyline method and manually adjusting the Z axis to fit my path, but the nurbs convert to a poly in very low quality or number of segments.

 

 

 

DAP-N3D.vwx

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Just trying to dial in here.  Is this something like what you are wanting to do.  The duplicates remain parallel to the x-y axis.

 

 

[Stefan B.]

Yes, seems very correct 😍

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

OK, now I know what you want. I don't think DAP will do this naturally with a NURBS curves with one command.  It will need an extra step(s) depending on exactly what you want.

 

Please look at the image below.  This is the geometry I made for you just to dial in your requirement.  I made this quite quickly, but notice how each section is tapered at one end.  That was the second step.  If you need each section to be perfectly square on each corner, I will have to look at another method.

 

Question, how many duplicates are there in the curve.

 

 

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

OK, so I think I have it, took a few minutes.  If the image below is similar to what you want, give me the number of duplicates you used.

 

 

[Stefan B.]

Well, I highly appreciate your assistance! But I would love to do this myself, so I can enhance my own knowledge too. 😊

 

I used every 60mm in distance, might be 80, I just did not get that far 😂

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

Hi Stefan,

Let's see if this works first and then I can do a short tutorial.  I can't explain this in a post.

 

File enclosed.

 

 

 

DAP-N3D_1_FORUM.vwx

[Stefan B.]

This looks very promising!

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

@Stefan B.

 

Hi Stefan.  This is the easiest way I know of to do this.  As I don't know what your end result is, so this may or may not work for you, hopefully it will.

 

Tutorial is under two minutes.

 

 

[Stefan B.]

Man ,this is awesome! Thank you for your time! While this solves the modeling of the steps, this is not usable for the further process as you state. What i left out, and now se the importance of, is that I need to count the number of extrudes  to get a material count. And I would like for each "stick" to be  a structural member that automates this process for me.

 

While There is not a problem to spend a lot of time solving this once, but I'm not really sure about the path. But i can work with using it as a solid as you first showed in your tutorial, adn work in that format until I(and/or the client) i happy, then do the final modeling. The top surface needs to be one surface in the end anyways. So this works very fine for now.

 

But I would like to know this is done in a better way. This is a typical situation for outdoor benches i would assume.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

 

 

10 minutes ago, Stefan B. said:

But I would like to know this is done in a better way

There is always a better way, but I would need to see the project.  The method I posted was a solution to the problem you posted.

 

If you want to give some more information, I am happy to look at other alternatives.

[VIRTUALENVIRONS]

33 minutes ago, Stefan B. said:

to get a material count. And I would like for each "stick" to be  a structural member that automates this process for me.

Just a thought, could you use your method for the material count and mine for the visual.

[bcd]

The count will probably always be (Length-thickness)/Spacing +1 I would expect or something similar.

A Marionette using a combination of methods will allow you to have discreet members that you could individually visualize and annotate