Courragated pipe

[SeanOSkea]

Hello all:

I'm trying to make a corrugated pipe like the ABS landscaping drain pipe you see everywhere. I'd like it to be able to curve along a NURBS path so the pipe can bend in multiple directions at once. I messed around with the Chain extrude (does anybody use that tool?) and was able to make it work along straight lengths but despite having Bezier options in the mode bar, it only seems to make straight runs with angular bends.

The best I could come up with was modeling one segment and then using a NURBS as a path for a "Duplicate along a path" that seemed to work ok but it made dozens of replications of the shape to do it.

Is there a better way?

Thanks

Sean

Edited April 28, 2015 by SeanOSkea

[mike m oz]

This is best done with an Image texture and Renderworks. See attached file which has a shelled pipe with an image texture mapped to its surfaces.

[SeanOSkea]

Thanks Mike

I am looking for an actual modeling solution. I could get a good effect with displacement maps (although it takes forever to render) but I'm trying to find an actual geometry method.

Thanks for the suggestion

Sean

[Benson Shaw]

Is the segment model with DAP not working? And how detailed does it need to be? Maybe skip the shell and just use a surface?

For DAP, most efficient segment shape is probably a Revolve with Rail made into a symbol. Sweeps and solid subtractions will have way more vertices and slow down redraws,, even when made into symbols.

Texture on an extrusion, as Mike suggests, should be very efficient, too. EAP will be lower overhead if it is polygon (12 sides?) rather than circle.

-B

Edited April 29, 2015 by Benson Shaw

[AlanW]

This is nicely done. How did you put the pieces together in your drawing?

For a Noob like me what is DAP?

Ah , Duplicate along path,

Great, thanks for showing that, can do it now thanks to you.

You da MAN

Edited April 29, 2015 by Alan Woodwell

[Kevin McAllister]

Nice explaination as always Benson!

KM

[SeanOSkea]

No it worked, as shown in the image I attached. The only difference is I extruded two circles and fileted the edges rather than sweeping the shape. That's why mine is solid inside.

So no, it's not that I didn't get results, I just wondered if there was a more poly-efficient way to do it as creating potentially hundreds of copies of the segment seemed intensive.

Thanks for your post. Got an interesting conversation on the forums if nothing else.

--Sean