You will have to split the pipe and rebuild some of it. Below is a part of it. The crossing can be solved by splitting the surface with intersection curves. The loop is more complicated. I deleted the part which had the self intersection and rebuilt it with a network surface and 4 blended “rails”. The part shown below is a closed polysurface.
[image]
selfintersectingsrf.3dm (2.6 MB)
This was a simpliefied example for a similar problem.
You might have to duplicate the object and use surface trimming to split the knot into separate pieces. Cap these and union the first with the second and so on. If you’re still having problems, please post your Rhino file.
Here’s some of more knot stuff:
[image]
[image]
FigureOfEight.1.gh (52.6 KB)
You could use the rod goal instead of the line goal. The trick is to start the solver with a high length factor and while it is running, you drag the slider down to let’s say 0.3. In some cases the grab tool can be useful to pull one rope over the other.
I’ve done a few knots some years ago. My main goal however were knots with flat webbing so I had to use slightly more complicated goals. You’ll find some images and animations here:
Shoe laces …