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closed path/wheel rays

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TeapotCreation:
Hi,
I'm actually working on a bike wheel using RailClone and 3dsmax 2011.
However it seems that using closed/circular spline as linear1S is not as easy as expected.

I need to explain a bit the situation : I've got to distribute some rays around the hub of the wheel. The distribution is regular, but varies for certain numbers of rays.
I've got a NGon (16 sides) as path spline at the hub's place. This path is in X/Y axis.

When using an axis-aligned mesh (see n1 on the attached pic), it works fine for a particular positioning (radial repartition). Slightly rotate the segments makes the whole array bugs and displays "No Geometry".
I noticed that if the path is a circular ngon, setting the segment count to 1 lets 1 segment per path's segment... so I've to set the side number = to the final rays number.

Another repartition needs that the rays of the wheel crossed, so I modified the mesh so that the ray isn't aligned with the center of the hub (the rays follow the tangent of the hub) (see n2 on the pic).
But when I set this mesh as segment, the RC element bugs and displays "No Geometry".
Is there a known issue with custom meshes used as segments in a similar configuration ?

Also I continued with the first segment, and managed to rotate them... and this is absolutely weird. The rotation center, which is positioned at the center of the object - and not the pivot point, seems to "move" as I change the value. I'm completely unable to adjust the angle nor the position of the ray correctly. Also if the value goes out of some bounds (+- 17.5), the array bugs again. Using translations and padding is hard, and doesn't fit my needs.
Is there a better way to make such a thing ? Is it possible with RailClone ?

Thanks a lot, and don't worry about asking if I wasn't clear enough...

Paul Roberts:
Hi!

This is an interesting questions. Fortunately I think it can be done easily with RailClone using the technique you describe, by just changing a couple of things:


* Make sure the spoke geometry's pivot is aligned to the end that will attach to the hub.
* In the RailClone object, go to the Segment properties and change the X, Y and Z Alignment setting to Pivot. (This will stop the position from sliding around as you adjust the angle. Normally RailClone uses the centre of the object to align the Geometry on the X axis, so if you change the angle the bounding box gets larger and therefore the centre point moves too. Locking the position to the pivot resolves this).


 
* When you rotate the segments the bounding box get's larger on the X Axis and overlap with adjacent spokes - causing an error. Therefore we need to specify a fixed size to use for calculating the X dimension of the bounding box to trick RailClone into allowing adjacent segments to overlap. To do this, in the Segment's properties set the Fixed Size > X value to something very small, for example 0.001 and turn off Scale Segment.




By changing the angle of the spokes you should be able to get some interesting different patterns.



Please see the attached file for an example. I hope that helps, but please let me know if you have further questions.

Many thanks!

Paul

TeapotCreation:
Hi,

thanks for these informations !
The worflow is efficient, it does exactly what I needed.
Thanks a lot !

Paul Roberts:
No problem at all, glad I could help out.

TeapotCreation:
Hi again :)
I'm facing another question :
Is there a way to adapt the ray length using parameters ?
I mean setting a Numeric parameter to ajust the length of the rays.
I've seen the tutorial "building bridges" but it uses an XsplineCoord, and in my case the spline is circular so I probably have to use another parameter, but don't know which one.
Also there is a doubt for me : is the Fixed Size of a transform node used as Local coords of the segment object ? Or World ones ?

EDIT : I've found that using Y fixed scale does the work, but the scaling doesn't fit the units, even with "Scene Units" enabled. Such as 1/3 smaller than expected.
(Using Yfixed size sets the other axis' size to 0, and the object is flat.)$
EDIT2 : Scene Units seems just not work : setting 100cm is the same than setting 100 as Integer or float or %.

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