Bend object

[Benson Shaw]

3d Modeling Wish:

Tool set or command set to allow bending of objects or surfaces

Examples:

1. Surface Continuity - An object draped over profile objects should maintain area and perimeter during a drape. Vertex count should not increase by much. This is probably a new function rather than mods to Drape Surface. Controls include a suppleness slider - silk is very supple, cold poly tarp is not very supple they drape differently.

A. A square tablecloth draped over a round table creates a new shape with same area and perimeter as the orginal square. Tug it to one side and it redrapes, but new config has same area and perimeter.

B. Invoke the tool, pick a "tarp" and a framework. Tool creates a new shape saging between the members with folding corner details and same area & perimeter as orig tarp. Edit with drag up or down one of the droopy parts btw frame members, and the perimeter moves away/toward the drag point to maintain the area & perimeter.

C. The flag on a pole - Starts as eg. a rectangle as if strong steady wind holds it out stiff. Invoke the tool to make it droop on the cord all folded in on itself, but same area and perimeter. This applies to excess material drooping over rigid members in A & B above.

D. Above examples are gravity related, but the tool should operate in any plane or with non planar starting objects.

2. Bend mode - NURBS curves & surfaces, Extrudes, pipe objects, EAPs, etc maintain area & length of center path during bend. Invoke the tool, pick the object, move a point on the object or its path. Protractor and bending plane appear with the preview. Or pick the bending plane and enter bend radius and rotation in numeric fields. End points and surfaces of new object adjust location and attitude.

-B

[Kevin McAllister]

These are all good wishes. Something that goes along with these is VW needs to be more efficient with meshes and other complex shapes. Adding a few of these type of elements can bring it to a crawl. Its gotten better in recent versions but its still not a good as it should be.

(Off topic but I've been playing with Rhino recently and I think it would be a good companion to VW much like C4D is. I've made many flags and table cloths using cloth dynamics in C4D. Not so easy to get them back into VW. The round trip to Rhino is pretty easy because they added export and import. It creates NURBS and solids.)

KM

[Benson Shaw]

Good observations. Maybe it does come down to efficiency. The bent or draped objects of the wish can be made or modified with current tools, but a common barrier is dealing with the multitude of vertices in Vectorworks objects. Fewer vertices or better ways to deal with the swarm would help.

Offsets, drapes, clips, many types of conversions, and other operations create a new or modified object with many more vertices than the orig object. Some of these new vertices are stacked multi times, or very close together. Segments between the new vertices are often short facets rather than curves.

The new object is therefore very difficult to reshape and may contribute to performance lags, eg renders, file launch/close, autosave crashes, more. Often, I would prefer an estimated bezier or spline curve, or a NURBS surface with only a few vertices, to the mathematical accuracy of many vertices and facets.

-B

[PVA - Admin]

Submitting now!

You are going to be pleased with future releases.