How to get Plane Normal to always orient UV in the same direction?

So I am trying to create some planes that are on a curve and perpendicular to a line between it and a point on a second line above it.

So far so good, I create a line and use Plane Normal to get planes that have their Z-Axes pointing towards the corresponding point on the top curve. I then rotate the planes so they are following the tangent of the bottom curve. Now I need to rotate the planes, so they are parrallel to the line connecting the 2 points, but perpendicular to the bottom curve (see image).

Problem is that the Plane Normal component flips U and V in some cases, so some end up perpendicular to the bottom curve and some are parallel.

Any ideas how to correct this? Or maybe even a totally easier method of getting what I am trying to achieve?

Thank you.

This is the patch (also attached):

Attachments:

orient_plane_bug.gh, 12 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Riccardo Majewski on February 13, 2015 at 10:11am

Maybe you just lost while building the definition (?)

(I haven't even looked at you "Rotation" group... as I can't understand its use...

rebuild your definition :P )

To manage planes I suggest to always:

- create a starting plane from origin, vector x (tangent of the curve), vector y (vector A to B);

- deconstruct and reconstruct your plane with rearranged XYZ components (by shuffling and inverting vectors) to achieve the plane you want.

(This can be solved faster and lighter by working with vectors, like with vector cross product etc.... and creating directly the final plane... but somehow I fond easier to follow with this method)

Maybe it helps.

Attachments:

orient_plane_bug_fix.gh, 8 KB

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on February 13, 2015 at 10:21am

Thank you, its almost what I want.

Yes, I know I should be using vectors more directly, but you know, I only did A-Level Maths, so I never really used vector calculations.

Anyways. Your solution seems simple, but its not what I need. Have a look at the images below.

Your solution:

My (buggy) solution:

The plane needs to be tilted to its "pointing" towards the top point.

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on February 13, 2015 at 10:29am

Ah OK, thanks to your start I have now found the solution which is even simpler:

Now its always pointing towards the top point :)

But it gave me a lot of understanding about how to best create planes. So thank you!!

Attachments:

orient_plane_solution.gh, 7 KB

Permalink Reply by Riccardo Majewski on February 13, 2015 at 10:30am

Ok, now I've seen it correctly. (Is this so?)

Used cross product now:

In case you don't know (1 month ago, I didn't) the resulting vector of a cross product is a vector that is normal to both input vector (A & B)... and its length is equal to the area of the parallelogram formed by A+B (except you set unitize to true, then length is set to 1)

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