New Custom Feature: Pipe Centerline

NeilCooke

This feature will create a composite curve along the centerline of imported piping/tubing models.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/cec835eb44a6b55666a42a85

MichaelPascoe

Cool! Time saver.

S1mon

There are few Featurescripts floating around which do the inverse of this - create a pipe or solid or surface based on a centerline. Will there ever be a first-party version of such a feature?

I'd really love to see a tubular offset which would take an edge between two faces (surface or solid) and optionally trim the surfaces or just create split lines on the faces. In a really perfect world, it would do its best to keep the resultant edges as simple as possible for further surfacing.

NeilCooke

S1mon said:

There are few Featurescripts floating around which do the inverse of this - create a pipe or solid or surface based on a centerline. Will there ever be a first-party version of such a feature?

Frames?

I'd really love to see a tubular offset which would take an edge between two faces (surface or solid) and optionally trim the surfaces or just create split lines on the faces. In a really perfect world, it would do its best to keep the resultant edges as simple as possible for further surfacing.

Not sure I follow? Do you have an example?

S1mon

@NeilCooke

Here's a link to a document which adds a tubular offset to an edge, then splits the adjoining surfaces, creates a lofted blend between them and replaces that corner with the blend. This demo doesn't do anything 'nice' with the smoothness of the curves, so the resultant surface is likely very heavy (plus there are some move-boundaries here and there which also add to the complexity).

I was just talking to @GregBrown about tubular offsets as a way of setting hold lines for face blends. This is a super common process that Alias and Rhino users take to get blends between surfaces which have appropriate visual width. It's similar but not the same as a chord-width fillet.