Spiral curves

[Parmenides]

I am trying to create a tube of metal conduit.  I would assume that I would just create a spiral and extrude a profile along it and then take the tube and deform it with CurveWarp.  But what is up with the spiral creation?  The only spiral I could find is under Bonus Tools and it's attributes seem to be locked. So once you make the spiral you can't edit it. ??    

If I create a Helix, I can edit the Coils, Height, Width, etc. but I can only use a polygon for the extruded shape.   Maybe there is another way to do this that I am not seeing.  Why is the spiral so limited?  Thanks to anyone that can point me in the right direction. -Derryl

[john.paul.giancarlo]

could you explain a bit further what you want to do ?   the helix would create a polygon but you could convert that into a nurb or even extract just a curve from it by selecting a loop and extracting the curve from it !

I am not sure if I am following correctly !

[Parmenides]

Thanks John, if you look at the image you will see that the conduit is basically an 's' shape turned and hooked on itself.   I realize I can extract a curve from the helix as I have done that in the past. The problem is that I can't edit it afterwards (rotations, height, radius, etc.) Plus the spiral under the bonus tools works just as quick but also loses the ability to edit the channels. I need to be able to edit the parameters after creating it.  Thanks. 

[john.paul.giancarlo]

maybe you could use mash to achieve that result and still have control over the curve,  the workflow in mash is procedural !  

have a look at this video maybe it will be useful

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Parmenides!

Just to add to this, I recently found this script that is really fast at making the exact type of pipe you want to make :).

[Parmenides]

Thanks Sean, that look awesome. Unfortunately though, Quickpipe and other awesome scripts such as Mesh Blend are PC only. 

[sean.heasley]

True but at the moment he's working on Mac support so fingers crossed 😉

[mspeer]

Hi!

Most of the features of Quickpipe are built in features of Maya.

With Nurbs and Curves you should be able to create "nearly" any type of spiral / tube.