Orienting object Along a 3D Helical Ramp

[Joseph_Morad (Dada52)]

I’m working on a Grasshopper definition for positioning and orienting object on a spiral (helical) curve. The curve itself is nonplanar and 3D, and the object need to be placed at specific points along the curve. My goal is to have each object oriented in a “roadlike” orientation manner—aligned along the curve’s tangent while remaining upright relative to the global Z (vertical) direction.

For my current gh def, it seems only half side of the curve is working, the it gets flipped!

I tried to do it with rhino array along curve command and orientation option = roadlike, and it worked perfectly. But since i have specific points on the curve that i want to place the object on. it requires grasshopper.

helper_file_gh.gh (9.6 KB)
helper_file_Rc.3dm (534.5 KB)

[Joseph_Oster]

ramp_2025Apr14a.gh (14.6 KB)

[Joseph_Oster]

This method avoids the slider, though the result is very slightly different…

ramp_2025Apr14b.gh (12.8 KB)

[Joseph_Morad (Dada52)]

Thank you for all your help and insights @Joseph_Oster

[Joseph_Oster]

My pleasure. Thank you for observing the forum guidelines.

This simpler method using the start point of the ramp curve avoids the very slight difference.

ramp_2025Apr14c.gh (11.3 KB)

[Joseph_Oster]

By the way, you probably have good reasons for choosing these points (blue points below), but you could divide the ramp curve evenly (white points below).

ramp_2025Apr14d.gh (14.9 KB)

P.S. Top views show good reasons for using the blue points, not the white points. But you can see that these “support brackets” have a few alignment problems using the blue points.

Blue points: (top view)

White points: (top view)