Geodesic on "freefrom" surface

Hi.

I have bumped into this problem before using the Geodesic component.

When trying to draw the geodesic curve on a surface - here a surface found using Kangaroo - from to adjacent edges, I often get these weird curves.

I understand that the geodesic component is based on the shortest path command, and it is obviously shorter to go this more direct way out of the surface. But is there any way to draw the geodesics more correctly?

If I was to do the same on a e.g. trimmed cylinder, the problem would be somewhat the same, the shortest path would not be on the surface.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Rasmus

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Arie-Willem de Jongh on May 9, 2013 at 12:36pm

Hey Rasmus,

The problem lies in the fact that your working with a trimmed surface. The surface needs to be untrimmed for the geodesic component to work. Remember that a trim is nothing more than telling the surface to 'hide' a certain part of it, but in reality topologically nothing changed.

See image for maybe a better explanation

Permalink Reply by Rasmus Holst on May 10, 2013 at 1:33am

Hi Arie.

Thanks for your reply.

Yes I know this is the problem. I just wondered if anybody made a script or something so that you can chose in which direction you would like to take the shortest path? Meaning that in your example you could generate the geodesic curve going in opposite direction as well.

Because this is an example of how only using part of the geometric theory limits the structure possibilities. If you know what I mean.

Cheers Rasmus

Permalink Reply by Rasmus Holst on May 10, 2013 at 1:58am

Just figured out that the Gridshell components from Alex Baalham does exactly want I need.

Thanks!

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