Creating handlebar tape / sweep on rail

Grasshopper
1

Hi there,

I am trying to model handlebar tape on Grasshopper like this picture :

https://static.bike-components.de/cache/Applying-the-finishing-tape--182ac6d1a191b802a247c6841ad062bf.jpeg

What I want is to have a grasshopper program that can generate tape on any kind of tubular shape input.

I managed to create a spinning curve on the outside of the tube :

Annotation%202019-06-20%20015406
Annotation%202019-06-20%20015406877Ă—882 165 KB

And I have a tape profile that I want to extrude along this curve :

Annotation%202019-06-20%20015342
Annotation%202019-06-20%20015342702Ă—857 188 KB

I tried different solutions to get the right tape shape (sweep 1 rail, extrude along, project curves) but I only managed to get it work by using sweep 2 rails but with a second curve (controlled with a slider but the correct value is kind of “random” to find) :

Capture
Capture1180Ă—847 81.2 KB

Capture2
Capture21200Ă—832 84 KB

(I don’t really know how the sweep 2 rails function works because here the two curves are really close)

I was wondering is there is a way to extrude the tape profile to be normal to the surface of the pipe and at the same time following the curvature of the curve.

Thanks

test_grip.gh (21.0 KB)

2

Just a thought…Since your tube is based on a circular cross section, if you first wrapped the tape profile around a straight cylinder of the same length as the handlebar, and then used something like Flow Along Surface or Sporph, to map it onto the handlebar it might save you some headaches.

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