Given a data tree, it is sometimes congenial to change the data structure to do an operation, then return to the original data structure. I have been looking for a good way to do just that, and I think I have found a decent solution. However, I would like to hear any other suggestions as well.
In this example, I have 23 tree branches, each containing 6 list items (Point 3d). I want to flatten the tree, move the points around randomly, then return to the original tree structure.
My solution is to use Tree Statistics to get the paths of the original tree, then use Replace Paths to map the paths to the flattened data. There are two caveats that might not be plainly obvious:
- The original data and the flattened data need to be grafted. This is such that each item has its own tree path. This is because the tree statistics essentially produces paths for each branch.
- Tree statistics must all be provided for the flattened data(which is now grafted), because the Replace Paths requires a search mask for which paths are to be replaced. In this case, I want to replace all the paths, so I just provide the paths for every branch.
In the end, a simplify operation resolves the grafting. You can see that I do this with the path mapper in this case.
Attached is my gh file.
Flatten (do some operation) Unflatten.gh (26.8 KB)
