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Free Example Tutorial - Mastering Extrude Along a Path to create complex assemblies


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@Christian Fekete I used to follow the logic of moving the profile to correspond to the path and orientating it in 3D accordingly.  It was a PIA.  You will see in that example file that it is not necessary in order to produce the desired results, which actually makes it faster and less painful 🙂  The secret is understanding what VWX is doing behind the scenes to place your profile on the path, which you can change after the fact.

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  • 1 year later...

If intermediate and end profiles are known, similar to ribs of a boat, might work to loft no rail from station to station to station. Some finessing required. Eg all profiles are NURBS curves and same direction.  Dupe the end profile along the path then scale the others as desired, then loft. 

 

For straight segments a tapered or multiple extrude can work. 

 

Can you post an example?

 

-B

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23 minutes ago, Benson Shaw said:

If intermediate and end profiles are known, similar to ribs of a boat, might work to loft no rail from station to station to station. Some finessing required. Eg all profiles are NURBS curves and same direction.  Dupe the end profile along the path then scale the others as desired, then loft. 

 

For straight segments a tapered or multiple extrude can work. 

 

Can you post an example?

 

-B

Thanks very much Benson. Seems I can get it working now, loft tool is powerful.image.thumb.png.c6400abaa526ed91c61fcb935cf81fd6.png

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On 4/7/2021 at 10:23 PM, jeff prince said:

I see a lot of folks post about the difficulties in using the Extrude Along a Path command.  I too used to have difficulty with it as it is not the most intuitive tool to use in my opinion.  That being said, I have figured it out over the years and recently discovered a convenient use for it to define complex assemblies that follow the same path.

 

See the attached .vwx file to learn a little EAP kung foo.  Gain the understanding of why profiles seem to have a mind of their own and how to bend them to your will.  Hope you find it helpful 🙂  Perhaps when I get my latest project done, I'll post some more advanced method for these types of workflows.

 

1088906817_ScreenShot2021-04-07at2_16_18PM.thumb.png.3c72fe001e16bcdbb5f0b736fb530949.png2101231201_ScreenShot2021-04-07at2_15_19PM.thumb.png.2540b641fab8a36e002410c36ef615da.png

pool test.vwx 11.38 MB · 38 downloads

 

I have used similar approaches but really it's a bit of a workaround for the limited capabilities of EAP and I don't think it should have to be this fiddly in 2022.

 

The main problem is that once you have created an assembly like this, it is a bit of a pain to edit it.

 

Firstly, in most cases where you want to edit one of the profiles, you will want to edit it relative to something on another of the profiles - or edit other profiles at the same time.

 

Secondly if you want to edit the path - well, you're going to have to go and edit multiple instances of it, or at best do a "paste in place" into multiple EAPs. Lots of clicks to achieve a simple change.

 

Some of these issues could be solved if it were possible to use a symbol as a path or as a profile.

 

And another thing ... it's not unusual for these kinds of assemblies to have a start and end point that is slightly different for each element (think of a wall with a coping that overhangs a little at each end, for example) and my experience is generally that if you mess with the start point of a "path" post-creation, all sorts of things are liable to go wrong, on top of the fact that the NURBS objects created are often much more awkward to edit than the objects you originally drew to create them.

 

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