Mate Connector Z direction

kevin_aub

Hi all.

I'm trying to use mate connectors to determine orientation. So in my case I want the wiring direction to be the Z axis of the MateConnector.

I've tried this so far:

    var cSys is CoordSystem = evMateConnector(context, {

            "mateConnector" : definition.startConnector

        });

    var startOrigin = cSys.origin;

    var primaryAxis = cSys.zAxis;

    var plane = plane(startOrigin, perpendicularVector(primaryAxis));

    var sketch = newSketchOnPlane(context, id + name, {

            "sketchPlane" : plane

        });

        skLineSegment(sketch, "line" ~ name, {

                    "start" : vector(0, 5) * millimeter,

                    "end" : vector(0, 0) * millimeter,

                });

Caden_Armstrong

You are setting your plane to only be perpendicular to the Z axis, but your plane needs to be such that the X axis is also set.
plane(origin,zaxis,xaxis) will ensure that the plane is in a predictable direction so that you can have the X or Y axis of your sketch correspond to the Z direction.

Another option you have is to use opFitSpline. If you only put two points into a fitspline it comes out as a straight line.
That might get you your result more easily than creating a sketch just to create a line, as you can just put two 3d points in, such as your origin and origin+length*direction.

Jacob_Corder

or just get the direction with this

export function directionTo(fromPoint ,toPoint ) 
{ 
    return normalize(toPoint-fromPoint);
}

If you need to make a line, this is by far the fastest method I have created below. The function accepts either 3d Vectors or a 3 dimension array of point values in meters. which is even faster. 

function opLine(context is Context, id is Id, startPoint, endPoint)
{ 
         @opCreateBSplineCurve(context, id, {
                "bSplineCurve" : { "controlPoints" : [startPoint, endPoint], "degree" : 1, "dimension" : 3, "knots" : [0, 0, 1, 1], "isPeriodic" : false, "isRational" : false }
         });
}

sorry for the formatting above.

kevin_aub

Thanks @Caden_Armstrong and @Jacob_Corder. Your guidance greatly helped expand my understanding and I managed to do what I needed from this. Since I wanted to use the positive Z direction of the Mate Connector I had to play a bit with fromWorld but I think I got there eventually!