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Custom Feature: ProtoPipe – Totally tubular structures, totally fast.

roman_jurt190roman_jurt190 Member Posts: 79 EDU
in FeatureScript

Dear PiedPipers!

Link to the ProtoPipe

Every year, I challenge my Industrial Design students to an "intuitive engineering" contest: building bridges out of wooden sticks and 3D-printed nodes. Building these the standard way – juggling 3D-points, routing curves, queries, and pipe edges – works okay, but means a lot of going back and forth…

I wanted a tool that lets you drop 3D points on the fly, adjust their "Reach" to control connectivity, and instantly generate a prototype-ready structure.

Enter ProtoPipe! A fast way to design spaceframes that are easy to fabricate.

The tool is split into three simple tabs that guide you through the workflow:

  • 3D-Points: Add and tweak your points, then set the "Reach." A Reach of 0 connects only to the nearest neighbor, while a 1 connects the point to everything in sight.
  • Connections: Manually include or exclude specific lines if the automatic Reach settings need a little fine-tuning.
  • Tubes and Nodes: Generate the final 3D geometry. And It preps the tubes so you can easily auto-layout them for fabrication later.

I'm not entirely sure if there is a massive real-world use case for this yet, so I’d love to hear what you all think. And maybe this is a case where a classic custom feature tree still makes more sense:)
But here are a few ideas to get you started

  • Go big: Build structures way larger than your printer's build volume using standard PVC pipes.
  • Scavenger prototyping: Use drinking straws, dry spaghetti, broomsticks, cardboard tubes, pool noodles selfiesticks….
  • Print flexibility: We use SLS printers (which are perfect for the complex nodes), but standard FDM works perfectly fine too.
  • Get flexible: inflatable bike tubes could create dynamic, flexible frames.
  • Snap-fit Assembly: In an older Part Studio, I had partly open nodes working so you could snap the tubes in from the side – no sliding required!
    Bringing that back would mean changing the whole architecture, though...
PROTOTUBE_big.gif Bildschirmfoto 2026-06-23 um 13.14.40.png Bildschirmfoto 2026-06-23 um 13.14.54.png PROTOTUBE bike1.gif Bildschirmfoto 2026-06-23 um 10.58.27.png proto.jpeg
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Comments

  • MichaelPascoeMichaelPascoe Member Posts: 2,898 PRO

    Ooo! 🤩


    RENDERCAD
    rendercad.ai - Photorealistic product rendering.

    ▚▞▚▞▚▞▚▞▚
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  • jnewthjnewth Member, OS Professional Posts: 148 PRO

    I completely don't care how "massive real world use case" this is. This is super awesome. That's a good enough reason.

    One extension that occurred to me: determine, from a catalog of joints, what the "closest" fit would be and build a nearest-fit version from that.

  • roman_jurt190roman_jurt190 Member Posts: 79 EDU
    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/131606#Comment_131606

    Thank you! You have to explain a bit more how you imagine this “catalogue of joins”…

    As of now, selecting a point and setting the reach to 0 picks the closest point and makes just one connection. If there are 10 points, setting it to 0.5 will make 5 connections (from that point)… and 1 will make all connections.

    Prior to this reach system, I played around with different ideas:

    • generating a closed body from all the points and working with this
    • defining the total number of connections that are allowed
    • making more lines where the body walls are closer to each other
    • I was trying to do topology optimisation without actually doing that :)

    but i liked the simplicity of individual reach settings…

  • roman_jurt190roman_jurt190 Member Posts: 79 EDU

    I did some real-life tests. I designed a laptop stand in 5 minutes, printed the nodes (in PA12 on your Fuse 1 printer). and cut and assembled the 2 mm stainless steel wires on the fly, using the digital model as a guide. This took me another 5 minutes.

    I'm really happy with how quickly I could iterate through different ideas and node placements. The resulting structure is rigid while remaining lightweight and elegant.

    I suggest unchecking "Generate 3D Nodes and Tubes" until you're satisfied with the construction, and only enabling it at the end.

    Bildschirmfoto 2026-07-02 um 11.25.44.png
  • MDesignMDesign Member Posts: 1,441 PRO

    Wow… That's wild. nice job.

  • EvanReeseEvanReese Member, Mentor Posts: 2,979 PRO

    This is disgustingly cool! I recall chatting a bit about this kind of thing a while back and it's awesome to see the workflow so refined! I may have to buy a stock of little rods to keep next to my printer now.

    Evan Reese
    The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
    www.theonsherpa.com
  • EvanReeseEvanReese Member, Mentor Posts: 2,979 PRO

    Okay I replied before I even played with it. There's a magical (if unpredictable) amount of logic going on to automate connections with Reach which is interesting. It feels very fluid to use. It's great as-is, but in case you want some extra work here are some ideas 🙃:

    1. include "add point on axis drag" option like Routing Curve. It makes creation even faster. If you drag an arrow it makes a new point, if you drag a square it doesn't. It's nice not having to mouse back to the UI over and over.
    2. Handle nodes more like Routing Curve instead of how I did it on Freeform spline. It's better than managing a massive list of "node nth" which doesn't mean much.
    3. Use point manipulators for mapping connections, rather than saying point 1 to point 4. Again, trying to push the interactivity. Maybe the multi-select capability recently added to Edit Curve and Routing Curve has something to teach?
    4. Skip the auto-layout part and create an automatic Cutlist table instead. I don't think you're actually using Auto-layout for production, you are just trying to make an easy-to-reference collection of rods. Cutlist is the perfect solution here. It can have length and qty for each rod, as well as cross-highlight to the rods in the model when you mouse over the table. It can even be inserted into a drawing and ballooned if you wanted to just bring a 1-page drawing to the shop to make your cuts (though I'd personally just bring the iPad)
    5. Add "description" to all of the parameters, so users get a tooltip on mouseover. Since you're using an LLM it should be fast.
    6. Handle crossed beams with another joint (or at least make it optional). It's easy to produce beams that intersect one another, and for some build they might be fine to just bend past one another, but for other cases you'd want a joint there.
    Evan Reese
    The Onsherpa | Reach peak Onshape productivity
    www.theonsherpa.com
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