Help with stepped Fence

[Dragan]

I have a lot to do on a current project and I`m going to leave this fence for the end but, in the meantime, it will be nice if someone can help.
I need to adopt the post to be 5cm over the Default segment following the curve. It has to be a stepped fence.

I have a workaround creating the default segment with one complete sample post+default+post with negative padding for the post width. This will give me the desired look but with the duplicated post so I`ll have to convert to Mesh a manually delete problematic posts.

Any idea?
tnx

[Paul Roberts]

Hi Dragan,

thanks for that question - it was a real head-scratcher. I think I have something that may be useful, it's not 100% accurate but it might be good enough. Basically I am using the newly introduced XSplineXDirection variable to find the angle of the spline underneath the post and coupling it with some trig to find the difference in heights from one side of a fence panel to another.



File is attached.

Best,
Paul

[Dragan]

Hi, Paul.
I assumed it will have something with XSpline#Direction because with the previous RC this problem was unsolved (therefore workaround with some subediting deleting lower posts).
Although I already finished my project with a workaround I think this will be a great Tip/Tutorial for fence generators. Please consider making a Tip/Tutorial also introducing the power of new attribute variables not just for banking but for solving problems like this one. As I remember this problem was quite often a topic question.
Thank You for your time!
Best Regards

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks Dragan. Good idea. It'd probably make more sense for me to make this into a macro and release that with some explanation rather than try to unpick the maths. Many users are already nervous about the complexity of RailClone - I don't want to scare them further 

Paul

[Dragan]

Yes, I agree  Macro sounds great, but if You don't make at least a 10-second tip it will remain hidden here in the forum topic and not many users will know what is all about.
I remember SurfaceToSpline Distance. Great topic, we were banging our heads the whole day to solve it and You came up with a great solution and I think there is just one info about this one together with Y-Adaptive.
Sometimes users think RC is not a tool for solving some problems but:
There is a simple solution for all the problems but there is no simple way to find it.