Problem arraying a 3D object along a spline

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 09:32:29 GMT

I'm trying to create a hose that has ringed bumps along it - and have succeeded in doing so when it comes to the hose reeled around a hook, however the part that links on to the hose pump is a spline that drops and curves around the back of a product to where the hose reel is. I've managed to sweep along the spline to create the hose itself, however when I create a torus and attempt to array it along the path, it stays flat - as shown in the attached file.

I obviously want it to array via following the path and twist/turn to suit the spline, but am struggling to get my head around how to achieve this.

Any pointers would be appreciated, as it seems like it should be a simple thing but the more I try it the more I feel lost with it.

Re: Problem arraying a 3D object along a spline

leeminardi — Fri, 25 Oct 2019 14:25:49 GMT

I played around with arraypath and it appears it does NOT use the 3D tangent vector of a 3D spline with the Align option. I tried the z direction option but that did not yield desirable results.

I placed your original spline inside a 3D box and then created a flatten copy of it on the front and top faces of the box. I then used arraypath to array a torus along the 2D paths as seen here.

Using move with orthomode on and osnap nearest I moved the tori from the front projection to the 3d spline.

Then working in the top view I rotated the individual tori so that their rotation angle appeared tangent to the curve in the top view. Here's the end result.

After doing this I determine that it was only necessary to use flatten only once to get the tori oriented correctly for one view (e.g., front). You can then go to the other orthogonal view (top) to do the 2D rotate after moving the tori to the 3D spline.

A tedious process for sure but it works. Perhaps there is someone who can get arraypath to recognize a 3D tangent vector.

topic Re: Problem arraying a 3D object along a spline in AutoCAD Forum

Problem arraying a 3D object along a spline

Re: Problem arraying a 3D object along a spline