How to define a volume from a line in Gambit
 

I want to denine cilinders (3D) from simple lines (1D) with curvatures. That's because I have lines defining roads and I need to define cilinders or rectangular volume with some radius and centered in the road line. For instance, imagine the road has the shape of an "S", and I need to define a 3D volume centered on that curved line.

I think that is not possible with the sweep command?! In the future 2.4 gambit they will have a new command/feature that will handle this kind of job?!

Thanks,

Costa

Re: How to define a volume from a line in Gambit
 

So you have an "S" shaped curve, and you want to turn that into an "S" shaped tube? Is that correct?

If so, then create a circular face (or whatever shape you want for the cross section of your tube) and then sweep it along the edge... The sweep command does not care about the shape of path you're sweeping along (assuming there's no self-intersection of the volume when sweeping). Selecting the "perpendicular" option keeps the section orientation relative to the curve constant. Selectiong the "rigid" option keeps the section orientation relative to the global space a constant. Try the different options out to see what I mean.

If the curvature is high and the section intersects itself during the sweep, Gambit will often fail. If this is the case, use an actual 3D modeling package like Pro/E, SolidWorks, etc...

Hope this helps, and goodluck, Jason