Move Object to points along curve

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 8, 2017 at 3:19pm

Have searched throughout the Internet for similar problem without success.

You obviously won't find an exact solution, because nobody has ever had to do this particular set of transforms before. However transforming geometry is a fairly common thing people do.

First of though, are you sure you want to transform an existing truss, rather than create a new truss using each roof line as a guide? There are advantages to either approach, but you should be aware of both before making a choice.

As a general rule, transforming a complex piece of geometry (especially if it's made up of many smaller pieces) takes the following shape:

1. If your base shape consists of more than one part, create a Transform Group so you can treat it as a single object. This makes data management a lot easier.
2. Divide your total transformation into simple steps. Scaling, moving, rotating, orienting, etc. are much easier to define piece-wise.
3. Create these individual transforms using the appropriate components. Do note that the order matters a great deal. If you want to move and rotate something, it matters whether you move first and rotate second, or vice versa.
4. Combine the piece-wise transformations into compound transforms.
5. Transform your grouped objects using these compound transforms.
6. Ungroup your transformed objects so you end up with actual, individual geometry again.

The hard parts are clearly 2 and 3, which are also the parts specific to each case. It looks like the two transforms you need are (first) a one-dimensional Scale to make the truss the correct length and (second) an Orient operation which perform motion+rotation simultaneously. Your orient source plane is fixed at one of the truss, and the orient target planes will be positioned at the start of each roof line. The orientation of these target planes is very important, so you have to decide what the easiest way is to define them.

See also my post from 24/05/2017.

Seriously? How about a link?

Permalink Reply by casanouri on June 9, 2017 at 5:28am

Thank you David for the quick reply.

I hope I understood you correctly.

1. Either I try it with individual steps (move, rotate and transform).

That is, to move and scale each truss individually into the intended position.

2. Or I'll now try to transform the existing lines on the roof, between two points, to be a truss object (simply, replace the line with Truss components !?).

I will try the second solution. Let's see if I can do it.

Br

Noureddine