Hi there,
after posting the Tool for converting polyline-crossections to 2D-splines for building up CAD-geometry from mesh-models (https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/tool-convert-polyline-to-spline-2d/m-p/8779347) here is another tool for re-engineering mesh-models which enables you to pick two points on the mesh and connect them with a "straight line on the mesh-surface".
NOTE: to use the tool you have to convert your STL-file with the Mesh-Enabler to a "CAD-triangulation".
You can choose starting point, endpoint and a maximum of three midpoints. The position of all selected points will be fixed while straighten the line between the points along the surface.
After calculating the kurve geometry a preview is shown where you can decide wether you want do keep the 3D-spline or not.
The process of straighten the line is done in an iterative way where the points are smoothed and projected onto the surface. Therefore the numeric parameters can be controlled by the user.
In the pictures the step of finding the shortes path along the mesh-nodes and straighten the line are shown for some lines on the bunny-mesh. Don't worry about the coloured mesh-triangles - this is done manually for giving a reference.
Futhermore I did some surface-modelling with the generated curves which shows the weakness of the method:
The rail-lines of the faces are missing for better surfaces-fitting of the cad-faces to the mesh-geometry. So you can imagine what's up next ....
Another disadvantage of the tool is, that it is relative time expensive. I think this could be optimized by using the algorithm within an plugin instead of VBA which is known to act rather slow ... or an implementation as an Inventor-feature by the autodesk coding team itself 😄
As the last time I hope that this will help some people out and maybe we can welcome that feature in Inventor in the future ....
Best Regards
