Are Ruled and edge surfaces necessary?

If even picture are not enough, i’ll make my last attempt to let you understand with a definition:
RuledSurface.gh (10.1 KB)

Your first question was:

Yes, they are.

We tried to show you the advantages of each and every of them. But the result were your pseudo-polemic answers… Sorry about that.

If you just want a new component, you should have put it more directly, like:
“Brep.CreateEdgeSurface should be a component!”
or
“Brep.Split should be a component!”
…but if we bring all the rhino commands on grasshopper we would have the menus filled with too many things. (I periodically remove all the plugins i have installed…)
Luckily grasshopper have also the python and c# component, that let you “fix” those small problems with a couple of rows of code!

And I totally disagree with you: .CreateEdgeSurface lacks in control. I probably never used it and never will.
I’ve nothing else to say here.

@seghierkhaled I see your point. Brep.Create.EdgeSurface could actually be a component. Many things could be components actually, many things are missing, and many of those are essential, sadly. But we are getting there.

Recently a new component was added: Curve Middle for extracting the midpoint of a curve.

You can already achieve this with: Point on Curve, Evaluate Curve, Evaluate Length

The reality is that abundance doesn’t really hurt. You have multiple ways of doing the same thing. Many component are redundant in GH. I would even say your example is one of the least redundant for the differences people have been showing you.

But still, I get you. I like you python script. It is much better than Ruled Surface (for most cases) and it is much tidier than Edge Surface. Honestly, you could have a simply message displaying an error if you input more than 4 items per list and you would be enough for any user to understand edge surface works with max 4. But those are really small grain decisions, no point arguing over those.

Edit: Evaluate Curve only when curvature of curve is continuous and control points are all equal.

You can already achieve this with: Point on Curve, Evaluate Curve, Evaluate Length

Be careful there. Evaluate Curve would get you the domain middle at 0.5, not the length middle which Evaluate Length, Point on Curve, and Curve Middle gets you. Only time Evaluate Curve would be the same is on a line of degree 1 with no intermediate control points.

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Indeed, I avoided the clarifications…
Evaluate Length. (With N input set to True)
Evaluate Curve. (With C input set to reparameterize) It is my understanding this covers most cases but at some specific ones the output could still not be the middle even when the curve has been reparameterized.

I love how you don’t get tired of clarifying this Micheal :joy: I have seen this comment more than I can count. I started using Evaluate Length while discontinued using Evaluate Curve because of you.

Evaluate Curve. (With C input set to reparameterize) It is my understanding this covers most cases but at some specific ones the output could still not be the middle even when the curve has been reparameterized.

Reparam has nothing to do with curve length or middle again, it just changes the curves domain to be 0 to 1, it actually doesn’t cover really any cases for evaluating a length except the line one mentioned above or a curve with exactly continuous curvature like an arc.

Well, same as there are many centers in Polygon Center there are many middles. Reparameterizing a curve and evaluating t=0.5 is a middle by definition. Sometimes it will coincide with the length middle sometimes it will not.

Sometimes it will coincide with the length middle sometimes it will not.

But it is easy to determine when not. If curvature is not continuous and control points are not all equal. Domain and Length have virtually nothing to do with each other except they are both properties of a nurbs curve.

Length can be seen as the actual distance along a path where as domain can be seen as how long it takes to travel that distance. If a road takes you 1 hour to travel, it doesn’t mean 30 minutes will get you half way of that road, if the first part of the road is more curvy, you will drive slower and maybe get 30% of the distance. This was a good analogy by David Rutten.

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That bit I was missing. Thanks. Edited.