Paul first of all thanks a bunch for your continuous effort!!!
I took a good look at your file and it really works great. I only have two question in regards to your file. Since I have no experience wth the skin modifier. Can the deformation of the individuals pipes be avoided? (pic. dents.jpg). Secondly would there be a way to force the tubes to stay between the two main bars? Some of them sadly start floating outside the frame.
Please don't missunderstand this as me nitpicking. I really appreciate everything you have done
Now I have another question related to the same construction but a different solution. Yesterday I built the main construction per hand at least the big parts and cloned that via railclone. Not as pretty as being able to do it procedurally but oh well.
(pic. parts.jpg)
For the most part what I did works well on a straight spline but on a curved one I get a problem with the part the whole construction sits on at base level. The bending on it looks really wacky and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong here or if I have to split the base in more parts to get a proper result. (pic. bend.jpg)
Again I attached a few pictures, which display the problem. If needed I can upload the scene.
Cheers,
Oliver