Automating a Repetitive Task - Lofting manually made curves

Scripting
1

I design custom foot orthotic insoles in Rhino for my patients. The current method I use is to import a scanned STL file of my patient’s feet where I would manually draw cross sectional curves that overlay the mesh. I then use the loft function to loft these curves resulting in the desired insole surface that I would then mill out with my CAM system.

The task of manually drawing the curves becomes very time consuming when I have a large volume of orders. I am hoping someone may be able to suggest a much more efficient way of achieving the desired result. I come from no programming experience whatsoever but I would think there may be a way to write a script to create a “best fit” surface?

I also tried using the Section function that would quickly produce cross sectional curves however the curves are too exact to the mesh resulting in a very undesired and unprofessional shape. The act of drawing it manually allows me to make corrections and ensure a smooth comfortable and professional looking design.

Any help would be appreciated! I can provide a sample file if this helps to understand what I am requesting for.

2

Hi,
sure there are a couple of things you can automate but you will always have to check the curve and surfaces by hand in order to have a good look. You can check out this link to have a rough idea on how to start doing some scripting.

3

Also here is a link to a sample design

https://app.box.com/s/o7in1lw0v60tusd3v7dcnim4r4b76c7t

4

Thank you Alberto!

5

I think you will have a hard time making a script that will work as well as hand building the curves. what you do on the end of your curves will be hard to duplicate with a script. However there are some things you that may speed up the process.

I would use the section command to create curves from the mesh and then use those curves as templates for hand built curves.
In the file below I first created one curve in the middle and used that as the master curve. I copied the master curve using the orient (copy=yes scale=3d) command to all the other stations and then point edited all the copies to match the section curves and then loft. It took maybe 5 minutes. Curvature Graph helps when point editing

OrthoticX.3dm (137.6 KB)

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6

Have you tried to project the curves onto the mesh and then rebuild them? I just tried with 5 points here.

Rebuilt Curves.3dm (4.2 MB)

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