square piping

Does anyone know a simple way to create steel tubing along a polyline that has kinks? I'm looking for something similar to the pipe command, but with a square cross-section.

Essentially, I have a large tube that I would like to wrap with structural steel tubing to create a trussing system with points that can be altered along the edge curves. I have achieved the wrapping of the tube with an editable polyline, but am now looking for a way to give it thickness in three dimensions. I have tried sweeping a cross-section along the polyline, but that creates problems at the kinks. I've also tried offsetting the polyline and lofting the curves, which works as I offset along the larger tube, but I could not figure out how to offset towards a center point and could not isolate the individual sections of the polyline to offset that way.

Thanks for your help. I'm still fairly new to this program and any advice is appreciated.

I can upload an image to help illustrate what I'm trying to do if necessary.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ddelgiu on April 20, 2010 at 10:56am

try this:

http://madeincalifornia.blogspot.com/2010/03/multiple-square-pipe-0...

Permalink Reply by hokietect on April 20, 2010 at 11:31am

That worked perfectly. Thanks!

Permalink Reply by pabloHUMANES on December 10, 2011 at 6:36am

Thank you!

Permalink Reply by Manuel on December 10, 2011 at 8:50am

simpler version:

use graft and reparameterize options.

Permalink Reply by Anindita Chaudhary on October 25, 2016 at 2:11am

Thanks a lot this script works for a single curve.

Could you please elaborate on the following:

1. Why did you choose "reparametrize" in PFrame? Why is "t" set to zero? Why do we need PFrame in the first place when we have a rectangle?

2. The script fumbles when I set curve to multiple curves. Is there a way to set it ?

Permalink Reply by Antonio Pessoa Mauricio on October 7, 2017 at 6:47pm

you just need to graft the list coming out of the "rectangle" component.

Permalink Reply by JOSE MOYA on April 10, 2017 at 2:09pm

Thanks Manuel!!!!

Permalink Reply by Patrick E. on December 12, 2011 at 6:44pm

hi everyone!

i've got the same problem but a bit different. I need pipes or rectangles around my lines without overlaping themselves. i projected a voronoi on some breps and don't know how to get a thickness of the lines. would be great if someone got a solution on it.

greets

Patrick

i attached the files

Attachments:

voronoi_curves_on_breps.3dm, 154 KB
voronoi_curves_on_brep.ghx, 163 KB

Permalink Reply by Brian Harms on December 12, 2011 at 7:07pm

voronoi > crvs > explode > flatten > removeDuplicateLines (kangaroo) > use Manuel's version above

Permalink Reply by Brian Harms on December 12, 2011 at 7:36pm

...except exploding them will make the joints of your square pipes not so clean. You could try offsetting the voronoi cells inward before you project, then use the crvs to split the surface and offset the surface solid / bothsides

Permalink Reply by Michael Pryor on December 12, 2011 at 8:25pm

also sometimes tSpipe is pretty effective.

Permalink Reply by Brian Harms on December 13, 2011 at 12:10am

In your case since voronoi outputs closed curves, which pipe/sweep really nicely in terms of corner conditions (as opposed to exploded curves like I suggested earlier) it might just be better to sweep them all the same and either:

live with the overlap (it shouldn't be noticeable since the overlapping curves are identical). Then you could boolean union if you need it to be solid.

OR, you could look into sweeping half of a square or rectangular profile on the inside of each cell, then join them all which would avoid overlap (not sure about where the curves turn the corner of the Breps though...).