ellipse tangent to a curve

guys, I need some help on creating some ellipse

in the attachment you can find a profile curve, which will be divided with a specific Z-axis value (say, 50mm) which will be very easy to find out in grasshopper, but what I want to do next, it to put a set of ellipse on this horizontal line, which is also tangent to the curve itself.

what I can think about it to move the ellipse horizontally at the correction position, but I have no idea how to I get the accurate distance (D1, D2, D3, etc...) in grasshopper

maybe I should try Galapagos? but I never try this before, can anyone show me?

Attachments:

ellipse tangent to a curve.pdf, 14 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 27, 2014 at 6:33am

Give this a shot:

By using the Horizontal Frame component at the beginning to give frames along the curve, you can create the ellipses on those frames. It starts out at the center of the ellipse, so you have to move them over by radius of the ellipse.

Permalink Reply by Preston Chan on October 27, 2014 at 7:17am

thanks for the help Damon but there is one little thing.

the major axis (the longer one) for those ellipse are not pointing to the centre, which is the Y-component from the deconstruct plane in your defination. so the worse thing is the tangent point is not on the major axis too. so I expect the move distance will be varies as the angle normal vector and major axis are changing.

but still, thank you so much for your feed back

Permalink Reply by Damon on October 27, 2014 at 7:56am

I don't understand your response. With the above setup, the major axis is always perpendicular to the curve. If the length of the major axis changes, the angle won't change, just the amount you have to move the ellipse. Instead of the slider called "Radius 2" in my example, it would be a list of values and it would be plugged into the R2 of the Ellipse and the A of the Amplitude component. Perhaps I don't understand what result you want to begin with...

Permalink Reply by Preston Chan on October 27, 2014 at 8:21am

your concept works perfectly if I want them perpendicular to the curve, but for this case, I do not want them perpendicular to the curve, they should be placed in the specific angle

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