Hi,

I'd like to wrap the yellow curve all the way around the blue cylinder.

Is there a way to do it, and if so, how?

Thanks.

Mark

Craig,

I had tried that before my post.

It did look like it worked but it really did not.

My curve had three humps and three valleys before projecting it onto a cylindrical surface.

After projecting it, it wrapped all the way around the cylinder but I counted only two humps and two valleys.

It would be so great if that method worked.

I hope there is some other way.

Thanks.

Mark

"Why not just use a two point circle on top of the cylinder and then move it down to where you want it, convert it to a spline and then move the vertices into the position you want."

Craig, I think the above method would work fine, and would probably the easiest with a bezier spline.

In the meantime, I figured out something else - I swept a rectangle along my wavy curve whose end points were spaced the exact length equal to the length of my circle and then used the "curve bend" command to bend the swept wavy solid along the circle.

Then I used the "explode curve" command (in the surfaces menu) to explode the edges of my wavy swept solid that had been bent around the circle. So now I got my wavy line wrapped around the circle and it is still associative to the original wavy bezier curve so that I can easily modify the amplitude of my humps and valleys.

A small problem occurs with this method: when you get the length of the circle from the "check length" command, it only gives you three decimal places. So that the wrapped solid does not meet exactly end to end - it seems it does to the naked eye but of course three dec places is still much coarser than the tolerance in the software. However, once the edges are exploded, they seem closed...


I like your "weird thing". It looks like a sculpture. And I like your rendering. Now you have a piece of art : )

What I have ultimately been trying to model is a bowl with a wavy top edge. So I used my exploded edge as a sweep path for a rectangle and I subtracted that solid to from a "bowl" with a flat edge. I could not use the original solid created by the "curve bend" command (as I should have been able to) because of the three digit inaccuracy mentioned above - its end faces would not meet exactly and it was failing the boolean subtraction command. That's why I used the "explode edge" workaround - the exploded edge seemed to be closed. Weird... but it worked.

Thanks again.

The two point circle was a crazy idea but it worked brilliantly!
You have to convert to a Interpolate Spline because if a Bezier is used you cannot add points as the spline will then pull away from the cylinder.
I was quite surprised it worked so well, the luck was in the Interpolate Spline having so many control points when the Bezier only has four.

Now we can make any shape on a cylinder very quickly, nice question Mark.

Edited by user Thursday, April 7, 2016 2:57:06 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Tim,

Very simple, thanks.

I did it the hard way but a bit similar.

However, how did you get the exact length of the plane / cylinder intersection circle to bend the pipe to?

The "check length" command only gives three decimal places accuracy so I find that the bent shape's ends do not meet precisely after bending.

Or do they? I've been having some trouble with the boolean and other functionality of bent shapes and I assumed it's because there is a micro gap where the ends meet.

Or should I simply make the pipe shape a bit longer than the circle's length and that will force the ends to meet? I guess that's the answer...

Mark