Closest distance between pipes (open mesh)

Grasshopper
1

Hi all,

I am looking to find the closest distance between several pipes. The pipes come in as open meshes. Any suggestions?

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image1001×837 142 KB

MinDist.3dm (615.2 KB)

2

Model a perpendicular plane, create sections and then it should be simple to get the closest distance since the pipes are circular.

3

Thanks for the suggestion, Martin. Could you elaborate on which components you recommend to use? For perpendicular plane, I assume you mean “perp frames” and for sections i tried mesh|plane? As a result i do not get the curves for each perp frame, but only some…From the ones that do draw out only a few or one pipe shows as a curve. Am I using the components wrong?

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image1619×556 137 KB

4

Ok, so you don’t really need Grasshopper to do that.

  1. ExtractMeshEdges
  2. Draw a polyline from one edge of one pipe to an edge of two other pipes snapping to perpendicular points. The result is a planar polyline with two segments. We’re ignoring one pipe.
  3. That polyline is planar. You can use Auto CPlane to draw a surface which is perpendicular to three of the four pipes.
  4. Create sections of the surface and each pipe
  5. Select the control points of each section and fit a circle to each polyline using _Circle _FitPoints
  6. Connect the centers of these circles and trim what’s inside the circles or use _Line _Perpendicular _2Curves to draw the shortest segments between the circles.

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image2327×1465 170 KB

MinDist_section.3dm (1.6 MB)

5

Thanks for detailed response. Would this work for GH also? I would need to perform distance check a lot of places, so it would be beneficial to automate this.

6

This can be done in a similar way, yes