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.

▶ Reply to This

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...

▶ Reply

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

That worked perfectly. Thanks!

▶ Reply

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

Thank you!

▶ Reply

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

simpler version:

use graft and reparameterize options.

▶ Reply

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

▶ Reply

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

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

▶ Reply

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

▶ Reply

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

also sometimes tSpipe is pretty effective.

▶ Reply

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...).