Orient surfaces (and curves on it)

Hi everyone,

I need to orient a list of surface on a horizontal plane. Each surface "contains" lines (from 1 to 20 lines for each surface) which are drawn on it.

I would like to orient all the lines with the surfaces they are related to. To do this I need to sort the lines in groups (one group for one surface) and then to orient them with the same command that i use to orient the surfaces.

How can I sort the lines in order to create such a list ?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Peter Kluck on July 21, 2012 at 12:53pm

Hi Axel,

It´s only one possible approach, but it works. Give it a try.

Cheers, Peter

Attachments:

OrientInGroups.gh, 7 KB
orientInGroups.3dm, 58 KB

Permalink Reply by djordje on July 22, 2012 at 3:27pm

Peter can I ask you for a favor?

Can you please save this OrientInGroups.3dm file as Rhino 4 3D Models file (File-> Save as)?

You seem to be using Rhino 5, and Rhino 5 files can not be opened in Rhino 4.

Thank you.

Permalink Reply by Peter Kluck on July 24, 2012 at 10:39pm

Hi,

Pleas find attached the Rhino 4 flie.

Best, Peter

Attachments:

orientInGroups_RH4.3dm, 57 KB

Permalink Reply by djordje on July 25, 2012 at 4:00am

thank you !!!

Permalink Reply by djordje on July 25, 2012 at 8:04am

Peter can I dare to bother you a bit more?

I am very interested in your solution and I am trying to understand it.

Why can't we just plug in the "Curve" parameter directly into the second "Orient" component?

Why do we need to convert these curves from "Curve" parameter into the points on the surface (and connect them with "Line" parameter) and then input them as reference geometry into the second "Orient" component?

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on July 25, 2012 at 9:52am

To simplify Peters, you can just use equals, also you can test just one point for landing on a surface and then cull the data tree of the curves, rather than making new lines.

Permalink Reply by Peter Kluck on July 25, 2012 at 10:15am

yeep, you are right, thats much smarter.

Thank you Michael.

Best regards

Peter

Permalink Reply by djordje on July 25, 2012 at 12:08pm

Thank you for the reply Michael.

But now I am even more confused. I want to understand the solution.

Why do we need to convert these curves from "Curve" parameter into the points on the surface (closest point on the surface) and then input them as reference geometry into the second "Orient" component?

Why can't we just plug in the "Curve" parameter directly into the second "Orient" component?

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on July 25, 2012 at 12:19pm

basically we need the points to test which curves are on which surface (look at the data structures) we get a point from the curve (can be any point. We pull every point to every surface, then we test if the pulled point equals the original point, this eliminates points in lists that are not on surfaces via true false culling. We can cull then the original curves based on this since their structure is the same. We are now left with the curves in lists that match the surface they are on. the reason is we want the curves on a surface to orient with that surface only.

See here the data structure of curves now matches to the surfaces they lay on.

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on July 25, 2012 at 12:37pm

as far as why points, points can be used also as a plane(xy) as well as vectors too. see screenshot.

Permalink Reply by djordje on July 25, 2012 at 1:59pm

Thank you for the help Michael.
I think I am starting to understand.

Again, an usual problem emerges: As an architect I do not think of this in terms of the data matching and the data flow. Which is exactly the core of the solution in this case, and in many other cases.

If I understood it correctly: we have a list of surfaces (in one branch) in "Geometry" parameter". And we have a list of end points (in one branch) from the lines that lie on these surfaces.
Both lists have only one branch.
We need to sort these end points, but in a way, that we know to which of surfaces they belong.
So that is why we are grafting the list of surfaces in order to get the separate branches for each surface. This new list of surfaces will enable us to classify (by "classify" I mean: to know to which surface, which end point belongs) the end points -> because we will match each of these end points (that we have in a list with only one branch) with a new list of surfaces (that we have in a list of several branches, where number of branches equals to the number of surfaces). Like this:

(I marked matching with only first two surfaces from the first list. The process goes in the same way for the rest of the surfaces)

The result of this data matching will be a new list (of end points), but the one with the same number of branches as the number of surfaces!!!

Now we just need to check if these new list of end points, which we got from the previous data matching in the "Surface Closest Point" component, match to those preliminary end points. If they match, then they belong to that surface. If they do not, then we cull them.

I might sound that I am just copying what you have just said, but that is not my intention. Sorry if it sounds like that.