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Sunstarer  
#1 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 1:50:36 AM(UTC)
Sunstarer

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I'm having some trouble thinking this through I guess and could use some help. I'm trying to draw a dial for a rotary knob that only completes a 300 circle.

See attachment for diagram.

I draw the arc and the first tick mark (A), then rotary duplicate 10 times (B), then I change the first tick mark to the smaller style (C), then rotary duplicate it 100 times (D). Looks fine right?

There are 10 lines between large marks now, not nine, and therefore I cannot make every 5th line bold for clarity, my next step if I could get there.

I'm sure I'm overlooking something obvious but any help would be appreciated.
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dial layout.JPG (36kb) downloaded 7 time(s).

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zumer  
#2 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 10:14:47 AM(UTC)
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There are 31 major radials, not thirty, delineating 30 x 10 degree increments, so one drawn at 300 degrees, 31 copies x 10 degrees does them. There are 30 x 5 degree delineators between those, one drawn at 305 degrees, 30 copies x 5 degrees. There are 4 x 1 degree delineators between each 5 and 10 degree mark. To me, it was easiest to do the 1 degree marks in three steps. The first is one line drawn at 301 degrees, four radial copies at 1 degree increments. Those four have one radial copy at 5 degrees, then the eight are copied thirty times at 10 degree steps.
*on second thoughts, four lines arrayed radially 60 times x 5 degrees knocks off one step.
Shark/VC does parent/child associations for solids, and there's linked mirror copies, but not associative duplicates of 2D figures in radial or path/linear arrays, which would have some uses for stuff like this. No block copies, either.
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ZeroLengthCurve  
#3 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 11:47:08 AM(UTC)
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Bend Graduated Ruler to an Arc with Perpendicular Rules Lines?

It would be really awesome if one could:

-- draw a line to a desired scale length

-- associatively tick marks in a desired pattern of long/short alternating lines (as on a ruler/scale)

-- draw a circle or an arc of a desired diameter

-- select the start, middle, and ending points of the arc

-- associatively snap the arc and graduations to the curve, with the ticks maintaining perpendicularity

Hmmm, I doubt it is possible, but, I will try it just hopefully prove myself wrong.

OTOH, presume the line-bending to a curve might work, and the perpendicular ticks might go around, too.

One way I deal with the scale ticks is to draw a segment of what I need, and then copy left to right minus the final tick, then grab and re-color them.

Also, I beforehand, figure out how many color bands I need, then, say, if I want 5 colors, I copy the ruler ticks, color them, then grab and translate copy all less the final tick (when that is the scenario), and move on.

If Tim and Crew can find the rotary dial tickmark/rule to be a useful feature, it would be great if they would add an option to alternately colorize tickmarks. Maybe some intelligence built into the tickmark pattern would allow tthe user to lasso them, say, up to five bands, see a prompt to select the colors (either user-selected or color-wheel influenced by the computer), then translate copy/repeat.

Come to think of it, I think the paper user guide book shows how to bend a line having perpendicular tick marks.

It is suddenly re-emerging in my mind.

Happy Hunting!
Sunstarer  
#4 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 1:21:12 PM(UTC)
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Thanks guys, I'm working on Zumer's technique now and have the question, what's a quick way to draw a line at 305 or the smallest increment line on the point it should begin without duplication, as Zumer's post would indicate? I can segment the circle once at the major radials and then again one segment break in half but there must be a faster way. edit, I just segmented the partial circle into 10 pieces and when I try and segment one of those into 2 segments the curve simply disappears.. I'm on SharkFX v8.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#5 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 2:49:11 PM(UTC)
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Try superimposing one circle over the other. Segment one circle to have the radiating origins you need.

Then, use the Gripper to draw a line perpendicular out from the non-segmented circle. I am not sure, thought, that you can start snapped from a point on a segmented line, but then snap to a secondary curve as the origin of perpendicularity.

It might be nice if that can be implemented. However, an alternative may be to project the line out to yet a third, concentric circle, and ratiate perpendicular to that.

Come to think of it, this raises the idea:

Create three or four circles, all concentric, but out to different radii.

On different layers, assign the cutting/trimming circles with their corresponding alternating curves according to desired dial length.

Trim as desired.

Then, add another trimming circle of desired diameter to trim out the inner core of circles.

It might be possible to use the part history or just an undo (before proceeding on to subsequent steps) and trim the radials by resizing the diameter.

Or, maybe associatively trim radials with multiple circles' diameters.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#6 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 3:53:13 PM(UTC)
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Hmm..

So much for associative trimming. But, it is at least possible to select the color-coded radial lines and change their lengths in the Inspector.

I got 12 radials, grabbed their outer radii's endpoints, and tried to use the translate tool to cause all to extend radially to the same, equal distance. However, they all translated off in the same direction as the displacement direction of the translate tool, if that description makes any sense. In other words, if I select the outer endpoints of 12 rays, and use the translate tool to pick the start and finish distance for translation, say, North, then all outer endpoints move the respective distance North.


Makes me wonder if it would be in Tim's interest and time scope to create a translate option that senses the inner and outer endpoints positions and allows the user to in one act select either or but not both endpoints identically across selected rays, and then extend or retduce their distance from the common center of the points. This could lead to some very creative and interesting geometry, especially if these curves and lines are the basis of an existing 3D surface or solid.

BUT, BUT, scale seems to do it, negating this, which I wrote before writing THIS sentence...

However, I am still exploring it...



Thanks for bringing up the dial/sundial topic. It's spurred me to deviate and explore something to which I'd not given much consideration!
Sunstarer  
#7 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 4:24:24 PM(UTC)
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Using a combination of Zero's and Zumer's concepts I think I found a fairly quick and intuitive method. 1. Draw the partial circle required. 2. Segment it into 10 pieces. 3. Segment one of those into 10 pieces and delete all others. 4. Offset that arc 3 times, once at each required tick mark length. 5. Segment the base arc into 10 pieces and turn on control points. 6. Draw only one of the longest tick marks at one end. 7. Draw the middle length tick mark at the center point perpendicularly. 8. Draw in 8 of the smallest tick marks perpendicularly. 9. Polar duplicate all of the curves 11 times in 10 step mode (for the required 300 dial). 10. Delete the unused curves. Sounds like a lot of work but's it's very straightforward and drawing perpendicular is not at all fussy.

No doubt there are many ways to approach this and speed of drawing it will certainly depend on ones cranial capacity : ).

See attached for diagram
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dial method 99.JPG (47kb) downloaded 7 time(s).

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Sunstarer  
#8 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 4:27:03 PM(UTC)
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Attached is the my finished project if anyone's curious. Note the text at the bottom is offset from center. I had to play with this quite a bit to make it centered in the resulting printout, not sure where the fault is there.
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Controller dial.JPG (65kb) downloaded 7 time(s).

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ZeroLengthCurve  
#9 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 4:50:45 PM(UTC)
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Glad to be of assistance on your epic journey to the truth, hehehehe.

It would be nice, though, if plugins and some degree of access were possible or didn't require significant programming skills. It would be nice if it were possible to "teach" the program to analyze the user's actions and then offer up some programmatic "possible" macros or recordable/replayable routines. And, it would be nice if it were possible for users to share them and build an Open Source library.
zumer  
#10 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 5:30:32 PM(UTC)
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Originally Posted by: Sunstarer Go to Quoted Post
what's a quick way to draw a line at 305 or the smallest increment line on the point it should begin without duplication?


Snap to the centre of the arc, draw at 305 degrees using the data box, trim within the arc as trim line.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#11 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 7:41:11 PM(UTC)
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Thanks, Zumer. I will try that, too!
ZeroLengthCurve  
#12 Posted : Friday, July 26, 2013 7:43:20 PM(UTC)
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Thanks, Zumer! I will try that method, too!
blowlamp  
#13 Posted : Saturday, July 27, 2013 2:20:18 AM(UTC)
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The Path Duplicate tool is ideal for this sort of work.


Martin.
Sunstarer  
#14 Posted : Saturday, July 27, 2013 3:46:34 AM(UTC)
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I think you mean Polar Duplicate. And it should be, but it requires a good deal of planning.

Edit: I did get Path Duplicate to work as well with the same preparation of drawing out one full increment of 1/10th of the required curves. It took the same amount of clicks to get there so it's a question of which ever tool one is more comfortable with.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#15 Posted : Saturday, July 27, 2013 8:57:29 AM(UTC)
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A good deal of planning


Which is exactly why any API access to create planning is crucial to expose or expose, since the more aggressive, creative, sharing-minded users and developers using VCP and Shark would likely share out (and, if reasonbly adept and feature-making) charge nominally for some kick-ass plugins.

It would be nice if some plugins enabled a quasi spreadsheet front end (OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, Excel, and even .dbf) tools to allow "freezing" the program, accessing the layers structures, performing surgery (without dissociating the geometry) on the organization, tree, branches, and even appending more meta attributes to make it easier to manipulate layers even after "unfreezing" the program.

A kewl plugin might allow ad-hoc drag-and-drop cross-tab-like filtering and finding on layers to create deep, granular selection, exclusion, re-selection, etc., of layers to perform administrative clean-up of mind-bogglingly complicated models.

A kewl plugin might allow in-CE drag-and-drop of any layer or branch/tree into or out of another; selection of them; cloning and dropping-in of branches with intuitive layer name appending or renaming, and so on.

A kewl plugin might allow users who have patent-unencumbered ideas to quickly share them and keep them from being oppressively suppressed. So, in such as case, pre-built clock faces, pre-calculated path sweeping, multiple-geometry-sweeping, and so on could be achieved. I dare say such things might double or even quadruple interest in and regular, addictive use of VCP and Shark. Of course, it would help if people would pay for it instead of key-stealing. It would help of more showcasing of the capabilities were on a specific, prominent youtube channel, and if colleges and technical schools would offer it as an alternative to credits-earning.
Sunstarer  
#16 Posted : Saturday, July 27, 2013 1:30:49 PM(UTC)
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Compelling, eloquent and insightful, Zero.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#17 Posted : Saturday, July 27, 2013 6:25:55 PM(UTC)
ZeroLengthCurve

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Why, thank you. :)
blowlamp  
#18 Posted : Monday, August 12, 2013 3:59:22 AM(UTC)
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A short video of using the Path Duplicate way to do this http://screencast.com/t/9Nzs8tXiSz




Martin.
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