unintended addition

[kerfboy]

I use vector works to draw parts for our cabinet shop. I am working on a marionette program to draw our drawer parts automatically, based on the size of the rectangles we draw in an elevation of a cabinet. It's almost there, but I am encountering an issue where marionette is adding several parts together that should be separate. 

 

In order to get the information from the drawing I am using the Objects By Criteria node to select all the shapes in the "drawer fronts" class. It then draws all the needed geometry for the fronts sides, backs and bottoms, and positions them relative to the original drawers in the elevation. In one operation the parts are overlapped when they are drawn, and for some reason VW wants to combine them into one part. Is there a way to prevent the adding? It seems like it would be hard to prevent it from overlapping the parts when I am using the Objects By Criteria node the way that I am, but if I could do that I think it would be a good enough workaround. 

 

marionette drawer builder.vwx

[Marissa Farrell]

So the problem here is the 'Planar Boolean' node. This node will create every possible combination of the inputs, which is why all of your shapes are adding together. The easiest way to handle this right now would be to enter the script of that node and remove the line 'this.SetListAbsorb()' (you will also need to remove the top line that shows where the referenced python file is).

 

There are a few other ways to handle this, but this would be the most straightforward at this time.

 

I've attached an image. Remove the highlighted text from the script and you should be good to go. We are working on another way to handle cases like this.

[kerfboy]

Nice, works great, thanks!

 

[kerfboy]

Okay, I'm back at it. Everything is working as planned, but I am wondering if I can make this tool a little more sophisticated. Instead of choosing the objects by criteria I would like to select an object and then apply the marionette network to it. I don't think I can use the convert to object approach as I need to manipulate the resulting geometries after they are generated. 

 

In a perfect world I'd like to be able to take my marionette network and turn it into a custom tool: I would select a rectangle, click on my "make a drawer" tool, then click on my drawing and it would insert all the drawer parts it generates where I clicked. I'm guessing this involves some serious programming...

 

If you run the attached file it shows some of the problems I am running into. I'd like to be able to run the tool without having to worry about the arrangement of the initial objects I am using as input. 

drawer builder tool.vwx

[Marissa Farrell]

Currently there is no way to run a network on a selected object.

 

To touch on your Convert to Object approach, you could "Ungroup" your Marionette Object after you have it looking how you'd like (I would suggest duplicating it first to keep the original Marionette Object intact).

Ungrouping a Marionette object would leave all of the existing geometry, but would no longer be parametrically editable.