New feature request

[johnr1 (Johnr)]

I would like to see a feature to draw 2 parallel lines between 2 closed curves.

Along with drawing the 2 parallel lines, it would need to split and delete the section between the lines on each closed curve.

The idea is to make ‘tabs’ for machining that hold the part while it’s cutting.

If this is already doable please direct me to the feature and disregard this request. Otherwise let me know if this is something that can be done.

Thanks!

[jason]

Check out this thread, it may help.

Bridge Letters for Plasma/Laser Cut

All of my bridges are 0.250". I define a surface that it .25" x 25". I place it at 0,0 for reference. I then run the orient command and place reference points at the center of that surface. The pause command allow me to make one bridge and then deletes the original reference surface. I assigned a keyboard shortcut to run every time I want to make additional bridges. The rest of the macro unifies the normals and adds to the surface that I am bridgeing to each time I make additional bridges. I’m…

Not exactly what you were asking for, but we use this micro everyday.
Yes a native bridge part command would be great.

[johnr1 (Johnr)]

Hi Jason,

Thanks for the quick reply. Yes, this is exactly the feature I’m asking about. I needed this the other day and felt like it’s probably simple enough for a smart coder to figure out!

So I’ll see if I can make it work on my end and let you know. Quick question, how do I activate/load the .py script? I tried drag/drop into the screen and that didn’t work.

Would still like features like this to become native in Rhino.

John

[jason]

You can download that script from this thread.

Surface Direction

Here is a script that might help. Find and make active the view toward which you want the normals to face, select the surfaces to process. Will flip normals of surfaces if they don’t face the closes to the viewing direction. The view can also be an oblique view in the Perspective viewport, it uses the current camera-target vector to check the surface normal against. –Mitch UnifyNormalsView.py (1.3 KB)

Just put that python script in your script folder so it can access it when it is called in the macro.
The script is not entirely necessary, but act as a safeguard to make sure everything is facing the correct direction. You could delete that step and it may work fine. It really just depend how the part was drawn.

Python Script file location location:

https://developer.rhino3d.com/guides/scripting/advanced-pthfiles/

Just insert the macro step in the a new button

Important: You have to make your parts into surfaces for this to work. I convert them back to curves using the Silhouette command after I am done making my bridges. The maco will place a .25 .25 plane at the 0 axis to define the tab. The macro deletes it after you place the tab. You can change that dimension if you want your tab wider or narrower than .25

First images is a macro that allows you to place the tabs only. You can merge all faces manually.

Second image I call “live bridge”. allows you to place a tab and the macro runs to automatically merges the faces with each tab to make it into one part with each tab placed.

Hope I explained this well enough. We were struggling with what we wanted to accomplish, but this what I came up with to do what I wanted it to do. I know it seems a little complex, but it works.
Im sure if I was better at python this could be done a lot cleaner. But necessity is the mother of invention.

Were using a windows 98 program that was made for plasma/laser file generation. It did tabs bridging letters and parts to the sheet. We do a lot signage so every letter has to be bridged to the main part. That a helluva lot of work to do manually. When the program stopped working we move the work to rhino. So i had to get creative. Hope you get it working for you. This macro has saved us a ton of work.

[johnr1 (Johnr)]

Hi Jason,
Thank you for the great description, and I got this to work.

It’s exactly the thing I was looking for!

I thought about writing (or trying to write) a script/plugin to do this, but before I went through the work (*and possibly failed) I was curious if that’s a feature that would ever show up natively.

So thanks again for sharing this clever macro and script, definitely find a use for it in my drawing!