New Feature: Freeform Spline

EvanReese

I've been working on this one for a while, and I think it's functional and stable enough to go ahead and publish. It's like the native Fit Spline feature, but you can add points to and drag them around in 3D space. There's a bit more to it than than so give this quick tour a watch. I'll probably use it mostly to route wires, ribbons, straps, etc. I may also find that it's helpful for making reference curves when doing surfacing. You can add the feature from here. Let me know if you find it useful or notice a bug with it.

Here's an example of something I'd really dread modeling without it.

MichaelPascoe

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Wow! This is fantastic!!

(┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻      

bruce_williams

That is very impressive and I have been wanting such a tool for mold design on 'organic' shapes.  Thanks for sharing!

bruce_williams

And I have to tell you - I am very interested in knots and yours had me going.  I thought, how cool a perfect figure eight.  But it is not an honest knot.

It is a half hitch pulled open funny.  Although looks very cool and I appreciated the brain game.  I am going to make more knots with you feature. 

wayne_sauder

Love it. Is anyone else having trouble getting the video? I keep getting the 404 message. 

EvanReese

bruce_williams said:

That is very impressive and I have been wanting such a tool for mold design on 'organic' shapes.  Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, Bruce. I'm curious what mold design problems you're interested in solving with this. Any examples you can share?

EvanReese

wayne_sauder said:

Love it. Is anyone else having trouble getting the video? I keep getting the 404 message. 

Just tested it out from another account and it worked. Try this link and let me know if you still have trouble.

romeograham

Nicely done, as always @Evan_Reese !

@Jascha_Wilcox check it out.

konstantin_shiriazdanov

Impressive usage of manipulators and edit logic function.

Prachi

NICE

bruce_williams

@Evan_Reese
You asked how I thought this will help mold design.

In words - when a parting line is a 3d curve designing the shutoff may be need curves are not equal distant from the parting line curve for blending purposes. A good 3d spline tool should allow creating these blending curves directly. Otherwise we do work arounds like projection or intersecting surfaces. 

I will put an example together when I can make time.

MichaelPascoe

I could see this easily being the number one featured feature.

sebastian_glanzner

Very cool!

steve_shubin

@Evan_Reese
Very nice feature Evan !

This is going to come in handy

@bruce_williams

Bruce — upon reading your post above, I looked for something to tie the knot in the picture. My iPhone power cord turned into a half hitch before I could even finish. Thanks Bruce. That was interesting

Looking forward to your blending curve example

EvanReese

konstantin_shiriazdanov said:

Impressive usage of manipulators and edit logic function.

Thanks! Almost all of the code editing logic and manipulator functions with a teeny tiny opFitSpline to actually make the line.

mahir

Very cool, @Evan_Reese! It's like @ilya_baran's Ortho Lines FS but but curvy I agree with @konstantin_shiriazdanov - the use of manipulators is polished and makes this very easy to use.

EvanReese

mahir said:

Very cool, @Evan_Reese! It's like @ilya_baran's Ortho Lines FS but but curvy I agree with @konstantin_shiriazdanov - the use of manipulators is polished and makes this very easy to use.

Seeing Ortho Lines a few years ago (or whenever that was) was the first time the lightbulb went off for me that this feature should exist, and I've only now gotten enough FS practice to make it. Thanks, @ilya_baran

ilya_baran

Very nice work, @Evan_Reese! I played with it and it feels very polished.  Using the points manipulator to keep the screen from being cluttered with the triads is a good pattern

EvanReese

ilya_baran said:

Very nice work, @Evan_Reese! I played with it and it feels very polished.  Using the points manipulator to keep the screen from being cluttered with the triads is a good pattern

☺️☺️☺️

Daniel_Kane

Hey @Evan_Reese, this feature is awesome! Thanks for putting it together and making it public. One point of feedback got brought to my attention:

When editing in-context, you are unable to reference context vertices directly with this feature. It seems like the native curve tools are able to do this. I'm not sure if there are larger technical challenges associated with this or if it was simply overlooked, but figured I'd pass it on!

bryan_lagrange

To everyone who are fans of the feature scripts @Evan_Reese produces and to those who are curious about the Feature Script function of Onshape; this coming Tuesday @Evan_Reese will share the minimum Featurescript skills every Onshape professional should have.   

Register now for the CST user group meeting. It is open to everyone.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAtdu-vqTwoE9PKQ3c_I3xChHmOmB_YUYC4

EvanReese

Daniel_Kane said:

Hey @Evan_Reese, this feature is awesome! Thanks for putting it together and making it public. One point of feedback got brought to my attention:

When editing in-context, you are unable to reference context vertices directly with this feature. It seems like the native curve tools are able to do this. I'm not sure if there are larger technical challenges associated with this or if it was simply overlooked, but figured I'd pass it on!

Thanks, Daniel. Can you share an example of what you mean? I just tried this and it works. I can see why using this in context could be really valuable, so I want to make sure it works.

billy2

@Evan_Reese

This really nice. I like how you can tie a vertex relative to a mate connector so the curve updates with geometry. I'm trying to think of my next design so I can incorporate the use of your curves. I like the flexibility and control over a curve.

EvanReese

Thanks, @billy2 I'm thinking of your cool cable routing presentation from the user group. This does seem like it would fit that workflow. I also just added a custom table to list out the lengths of all of the curves (thanks for the idea, @John_P_Desilets ). If you've used the feature in your Part Studio it will show up under "Feature-linked custom tables", so no need to add the table to "My custom tables".

Daniel_Kane

Evan_Reese said:

Daniel_Kane said:

Hey @Evan_Reese, this feature is awesome! Thanks for putting it together and making it public. One point of feedback got brought to my attention:

When editing in-context, you are unable to reference context vertices directly with this feature. It seems like the native curve tools are able to do this. I'm not sure if there are larger technical challenges associated with this or if it was simply overlooked, but figured I'd pass it on!

Thanks, Daniel. Can you share an example of what you mean? I just tried this and it works. I can see why using this in context could be really valuable, so I want to make sure it works.

@Evan_Reese Ah, this way my own lack of understanding of the tool! I am able to get it working now. Thanks!

MichaelPascoe

Some check boxes that would be useful:

• Draw multi-line segment instead of spline.
• Keep points

EvanReese

MichaelPascoe said:

Some check boxes that would be useful:

• Draw multi-line segment instead of spline.
• Keep points

good ideas here, but I'm wary of feature creep. You may have seen I did a quick "3D Points" feature. Does that serve the purpose of a "keep points"? I considered making it all one feature, but I don't want to pack it with a bunch of operations that aren't going to be used interchangeably. For example, I'd probably never start with a spline, and decide I'd rather have the points instead. Making the points and the spline is a different case, I suppose, but for that you could use 3D points and a normal fit spline. I can also see how a poly-line type of behavior could be interesting, but can't picture the use-case. Can you sell me on them with some examples where they'd be used?

MichaelPascoe

A good example for keeping the points:
You create a spline. Now you want another spline based off of that one, but with different offsets along the same points. Keeping the points of the original spline would let you easily reference the first spline. 

I have no good defense for multi-line segment 

EvanReese

MichaelPascoe said:

A good example for keeping the points:
You create a spline. Now you want another spline based off of that one, but with different offsets along the same points. Keeping the points of the original spline would let you easily reference the first spline. 

I have no good defense for multi-line segment 

Ok I like that example . I added it.

MichaelPascoe

Yesss

EvanReese

MichaelPascoe said:

Yesss

Yesssss