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Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on January 10, 2013 at 8:52pm

Pretty hard to do on a doubly curved surface- you'll have to compromise somewhere, since the distances across the surface in each direction  vary a great deal in 3d; the array calculation is in 2d, UV space, where the distances are constant.

-Pascal

pascal@mcneel.com

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Permalink Reply by Mac Rhino on January 10, 2013 at 9:21pm

That's what I thought when I viewed it from Top view.

If anyone has any suggestions feel free to tell! Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Mac Rhino on January 12, 2013 at 7:55pm

SOLVED* Mostly...

Here is how I evenly spaced objects (in this case a sphere) on a surface by a set distance.

1. Extract an Icocurve from the surface.

2. Decide what distance you want to space the objects in the U and V directions.

3. Offset Curve on the Surface (the Icocurve you extracted) in one direction by the spacing you chose.

4. Select that newly offset curve and repeat step 3 choosing the newly made Offset curve every time until you run out of room on your surface.

-Your Surface should now be covered in evenly spaced curves.- 

5. Select the first Curve you created then: Array on Curve the Object (sphere in this case) and choose By Distance and enter in the spacing distance you decided in step 2.

6. Repeat step 5 to every curve that was created.

Depending on how "hilly" the Geometry is you will probably end up with objects perfectly spaced by the distance you chose on your surface.

*The Problem: When Offsetting the Curves on Surface the curves might become overlapped and distorted. If it happens just split and delete the crossed or overlapped parts and fillet or blend the edges.

Here is some photos. I Boolean-Differenced the Spheres in the bent cylinder photo. Enjoy!

I believe Grasshopper can do this a lot easier, but it is not implemented yet with Rhino OSX. (Which I'm using). Any Tips would be great!

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