I am trying to find a way to get the values for the curvature/radius of this surface I am working with. Ideally, I would be able to pick any point along the surface and see the principal curvature values and directions to compare to other areas on the surface. I have tried probing along the surface, but can only get coordinates of points, not curvature/radius values. Does anyone know how to get numerical curvature values at any point on the surface? I feel like the data must exist in Rhino is they can make the plot. Some pictures of the surface are shown below. This is part of a bigger project and will need to do this analysis for 12 different surfaces.!
Hi Tyler - use the Curvature command for this.
Also, hit Adjust Mesh on the dialog in your image and set the mesh ‘Minimum initial grid quads’ very high: 5000 > 10,000.
-Pascal
Awesome thanks Pascal! I have another quick question about the output of the curvature tool. Following the values for the maximum and minimum principal curvatures there are a set of coordinates. What do those values mean?
Surface curvature evaluation at parameter (0.974041, 0.661954):
= UV parameters on Surface
3-D Point: (1.82837, 0.878327, 0.660075)
= x y z coordinate in World
3-D Normal: (0.280327, 0.302998, 0.910829)
= Unit Vector perpendicular to surface (blue)
Maximum principal curvature: -0.479789 (0.328983, 0.86108, -0.3877)
Minimum principal curvature: -0.209904 (-0.901769, 0.40833, 0.141703)
= the information about the red circles
curvature = 1/radius (the first numer) = (invers of distance red - cyan point) unit vectors defining the orientation / rotation of the circles in space (cyan) (your main question)
