Curvature Analysis on a Curve: "Curvature is infinite at..."

Hello,

I'm a bit of a novice at this, and I've run across a problem I can't seem to fix. I have a set of points, derived from a curve I created by finding the intersection between a mesh and a brep that I have turned into a mesh (couldn't figure out how to intersect a brep and a mesh either!). I want to be able to evaluate the curvature on each of the points on this curve, but I am getting the error "Curvature is infinite at...." on the Curvature tool. I've looked through the discussion boards, and can't find anything about this. Anyone know why this error is happening?

lily

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Permalink Reply by David Rutten on April 19, 2012 at 1:59am

If you intersect two meshes, you end up with a polyline, because meshes are made up of flat elements. Curvature can be defined as the radius of the osculating circle (Ro). The osculating circle for a linear curve is infinitely large and therefore any straight curve segment has infinite curvature.

At least that's my guess. Curvature is actually defined as 1/Ro and 1/∞ is actually zero, so maybe I'm wrong about this.

I do know that measuring the curvature of a polyline is pointless, you need a smooth Nurbs curve in order to get meaningful curvature values.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

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