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Point Index?


¢hris £und

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Hi Chris, 

 

If you hover over a point / segment / face with the desired Topological Level set in the Pick Tool Options, this information will appear on the project window.  It takes about 2 seconds for the information to show up and you must have Tips enabled in the preferences.  Does that help?

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It is exactly what I want!  Thanks!

 

Unfortunately, it also confirms my fear.   The unfold operation re-orders the points within the data structure.

 

It also, adds a little confusion.

in the two images below, one with a simple 3D object,  and the other with that object, but unfold has been applied.

 

Note, the first point (turned on in the "display options, "Show First Point"")  is noted.

post-9803-0-10121200-1490223037_thumb.png

post-9803-0-04527100-1490223047_thumb.png

Unfold Effect.fmz.zip

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It is exactly what I want!  Thanks!

 

Unfortunately, it also confirms my fear.   The unfold operation re-orders the points within the data structure.

 

It also, adds a little confusion.

 

attached is an "over simplified" typical pattern (model)  that I would unfold.

in the two images below, one with a simple 3D object,  and the other with that object, but unfold has been applied.

 

Note, the first point (turned on in the "display options, "Show First Point"")  is noted, as well as the edge where I want to apply the unfold operation to.

The second image shows the unfolded object with the preferred edge along the X Axis  (preferred method of using the unfold tool, to control object rotation (when unfolding 100's of patterns, it is best to control things up front, rather than try to figure out what the program did)

 

in the first image, the first point also corresponds with the pindex of 0.  which makes sense.     in the second image, where the object is unfolded,   the display notes that the first point is in the same location, however, the pindex has now changed to 4 and the rest of the points have also changed.

 

is there another level of point hierarchy not noted in the modeling environment?  a primary linked list that the "Show First Point" is referencing,  where the hover to display info is pulling from a different list?   (the segment order is the same, but the point order is not)

 

 

P.S.   there may be an "undesirable" workaround,   if I unfold at the pindex0 - pindex 1,   it will unfold with the correct order  (at least this object, there is no guarantee that other objects will behave the same)

 

BTW, too, I always control the pattern to be unfolded into a similar "simple" pattern such as this "over simplified" example, so that fZ does not have to split or separate a pattern.

 

 

Thank you very much for addressing this out of the norm topic!  Understanding this internal structure/behavior, is going to help me speed up my workflow SIGNIFICANTLY!

 

Cheers!

 

¢£

post-9803-0-30850300-1490224166_thumb.png

post-9803-0-78182600-1490224176_thumb.png

Unfold Effect.fmz.zip

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it Helps in viewing, but it changes nothing regarding my confusion and questions.  

 

Point order within the index still changes after an unfold, even though the "first point" display remains in the same place as before the unfold.

 

Takeharu,  Thank you very much!  appreciated!

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Just a wild thought here, in case this idea if it is not too old fashioned...   Is this point ordering needed to print on large flat material, to cut out void areas and then to seam it all up physically, to read the printed art properly? Back in the last century I tried getting a job to solve this need (of others) and basically had to include redundant, contiguous geometry on each face,  (to sort of map out each face content), to align printed parts, before physically re-folding and seaming. This sort of labels each vertex, with a tiny signature, like a unique  symbol, or notch count (which a digital cutter could add where the seam would hide these notches). 

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Bo,  Not too far off.  

I don't need to track everything,  just key locations that are easy to spot in 3D  but difficult to spot when in separated patterns.

Say if 3 patterns were arranges in a T   I want to mark only that intersection on each of the patterns.  

Right now, fZ has the ability to label everything, but my Cutter would kill me if she had to have the machine spend the time to draw all of those marks.

 

 

in 6.x, there used to be the ability to "Mark" a point.   it was dropped in 7+   Though, even in 6.x   it did not keep that point marked in the flat pattern.

 

Essentially, I want to replicate the marked point feature of 6 (not sure how I would display that it is marked), and add the ability to track it down when it becomes a flat pattern.

 

Right now, I am trying to get my head around the internal aspects so that I can build scripts to automate as much of this as possible.

on complicated projects, I can spend as much as 20% Of my time hunting down places that should be marked for the assembly crew to know where to put things.

I figure with scripting, I can reduce that by an order of magnitude.  Now that I am freelance again, this has become profoundly important.

 

Essentially, for this, I will need to build at lease a couple of new tools.  One where it will record the point index of a point of an object in an attribute, as well as a unique identifier (project wide)

The other, is to rebuild the unfold tool (encapsulate the current one really)  so that when an object has a marked point or points, it will find those points when unfolded and then add a small mark at that location as well as label it with the unique ID.    I also want to add other features to this unfold tool as well.

 

Of course, I could add another tool to do this after it is unfolded, but why not just do it in one step (if I can)

 

 

Cheers!

 

¢£

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Chris,

 

In your example, there are the same number of points in the folded and unfolded shape. This is in fact the exception as in most cases there will be more points in the unfolded shape. For example, a cube has 8 points. An unfolded cube has 14 points. It is not possible to maintain the ordering when solving the general unfold problem.

 

The first point concept is really a topological concept. It's the first point, of the first edge, of a face. Its designed to identify the alignment of closed singe face objects for operations like two source sweeps. The point marks were needed for the skin tool in previous versions, but this tool has been improved and the marks are no longer needed so thy were dropped (of note that they were never maintained through form•Z operations so they had limited usefulness).

 

form•Z does support custom attributes at the object and face level, but not the currently at the edge or point level. Would it be useful to add an option to the Unfold tool to label the points as we do with the edge labels? If not, are you already writing plugins? If we add a parameter to fz_objt_cnstr_unfold() that returns a point mapping table would this be useful?

 

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Tech,  sorry this gets a little long.

 

In your example, there are the same number of points in the folded and unfolded shape.

 

For my use, my example exemplifies 99% of how it is done.  For simple objects the unfold algorithm works well, however when building a Kangaroo shape, it does not.  In this case, I need to plan out the patterns that are based on intent.  Rather than guessing or attempting to predict how formZ will choose to do so.  So, out of necessity, I deliberately avoid the general unfold problem and apply it to a specific case or type.

 

The first point concept is really a topological concept. It's the first point, of the first edge, of a face.

It is this first point concept that is confusing me.   Within the Modeling window, with the "Show First Point" box checked shows only a single first point of an object.  Not the first point of the first edge of a face... 

if this were the case, would I not expect to see 6 first points on a cube?   or 3 in my example?  I see 1,  which does coincide with the first point of the first segment of the object (until it is unfolded.)   

 

The point marks were needed for the skin tool in previous versions,

I did not realize their original intent, and understand why you dropped them.  I just had an ulterior intent for them.

 

form•Z does support custom attributes at the object and face level, but not the currently at the edge or point level.

With what i am thinking, I don't think I need a custom attribute for the points. I just need to keep a list of points I want remembered.   since the unfold process does not destroy the custom attributes. This should work. I can simply do so in a string attribute for that object.

Problem is, noted above.  if the point index is changed by the unfold process, keeping a list of the points is now moot.  Unless I can understand how they change.

 

Would it be useful to add an option to the Unfold tool to label the points as we do with the edge labels?

No,  as what I really need is  how points correspond to other points on other patterns, knowing the point index is only a part of the solution, not the solution in itself.  

I also run into the issue of too many labels slows the CNC machinery down.  It takes far too long to plot all of the labels.

 

are you already writing plugins?

More of a currently mapping out what I will need to accomplish it rather than actively writing it.   I am currently writing another, that has larger downstream implications.

it would need to be completed before this one makes sense to have.

 

If we add a parameter to fz_objt_cnstr_unfold() that returns a point mapping table would this be useful?

Not sure what exactly you mean:   Do you mean  if new point 29 was point 3 in the original....   YES!!!!  that would be phenomenally useful!!   If not, could you explain?

 
I apologize, this was only intended to be a general question about being able to show the point index value in the modeling environment, which was answered quite well in fact!
I do appreciate your willingness to follow me down the rabbit hole.
 
Thank you for taking the time!
 
P.S.  I intend an an entire suite of flat patterning tools.
 
¢£
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