space something along curve

Driving Rhino4, pretty much a rhino noob.

Am trying to put something along a curve at a known interval. Have tried pipe and extrude curve, but not enough control except by setting max edge in file save.

Would love to be able to say, start extrude from crv end, and place object at interval X, and follow the curve (so object always points forward along curve).

So face have problems with pipe (sections are missing, possibly due to max edge settings on file save).

Not certain how I can build a small box of known dimensions and then snap it to be perpendicular to the curve end, and then populate along the curve with the correctly oriented box.

Some screenshots are from other 3d app. Suggestions how I can accomplish the extrusion (upgrade suggestions not helpful, I need to do this in v4 if at all possible).

Thanks for checking in.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hammond on February 18, 2013 at 2:18pm

the way i got the curve in my example was by running MeshToNurb on the mesh then DupBorder on the nurbs object (then trimming the unwanted parts)

pretty quick that way..

[edit].. and yeah, it remains 3D instead of the flattened result you were getting

[edit2] and actually, i don't think you even need to convert to nurbs.. just duplicate the mesh border via DupBorder

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Permalink Reply by Chris Tietjen on February 18, 2013 at 2:24pm

I wanted to do it that way but I couldn't find MeshToNurb. Is it in a drop down menu or is it only a type-in command?

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hammond on February 18, 2013 at 2:31pm

(i'm on mac so...)

i can't find it in any of the menus but it's available as a custom toolbar icon or via option-click on the mesh-from-surface icon in the standard toolbar.. (where it's called 'polysurface from mesh')

anyway, i just typed it in..

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Permalink Reply by Shawn Allen on February 18, 2013 at 2:42pm

Sorry Jeff - how are you deleting the unwanted parts? When I try to do Extract Curve on the Nurbs border, Rhino goes into Copy mode instead of letting me "unparent" (don't know official term) the bits I want to delete.