Tangent line between ordered circles

Hello Everyone!

I need help with my project.

I've already generated a line and divide it. I've created circles for each divided point of the line.

I would like to create a TANGENT LINE between the circles ( continuously , so in order).

I've already measured the distance between one center point and all the center points of the other circles.

But I don't know how to create this continously tangent line between this ordered circles.

Can anyone help me?:)

I've attached a photo about the project and an image about my desired result (I would like to have a continuous line for CNC cutter (blue line)). :)

Attachments:

help circle tangent.jpg, 442 KB
help circle tangent 2.jpg, 459 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bettina Voross on February 15, 2014 at 5:04am

WOW, Thank you very much! Yes, that's what I wanted to create. Now I see that your result is much more elegant that mine.:)

many thanks:)

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on February 15, 2014 at 5:37am

Doing it for a single curve is easy, just shift all the circles one position and connect them all together:

However it will behave weird at kinks in the curve:

Doing this multiple branching curves and taking them all into account at once is very hard. You may have to resort to some sort of CurveBoolean operation, but that doesn't exist in default Grasshopper. I think maybe GeometryGym or some other plugin might have this functionality, but I'm not sure exactly which one and whether it will handle collections of lines and circles.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

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