[Plugin] Shape Bender Beta

Dave R

Jasper, I've been having a think about how to draw a curve of known length to make the path for Shape Bender. It occurred to me that one could draw a straight line of known length and then use the Radial Bend function of Fredo's FredoScale extension to bend it as desired. You can make irregular curves with it, too. If the line you are bending is a copy of one that you leave straight, you then end up with both of the lines required for Shape Bender.

Of course you could also use Radial Bend to bend the 'plywood' panel. In some cases, though, it might be easier to work on a single line and get it bent as desired and use shape Bender to do the final bend.

oscarfalcon

Hello, I'm new to this forum. I've been using SU for over two years now and really like how it works, specially with all the plug-ins and scripts there are for making things awesome with it.

I have one problem though, I downloaded the shape bender script and the progressbar.rb file but SU7 doesn't seem to recognize them, any help here would be great. I'm using a mac as of today, I placed the files in the plug-ins folder and can't seem to find them in sketch up.

Cheers, wonderful SU community.

OFL

Dave R

Oscar, go to Window>Preferences>Extensions and tick the box for Shape Bender. Then go to View>Toolbars and select Shape Bender.

mac1

@jasper.middelberg said:

Thank you Chris and Gullfo,

yet, starting point is the standard size of the plywood
and not having to make cuts before hand.

Making use of standard sized plywood,
bend it onto a desired shape,
with an overlap, to be able to determine the boltpositions
and finally know the cutpatterns for top & bottom

I really don't know how this can be modeled in a way it is easy to experiment.
in Sketchup or any 3d software.

yet I guess this workflow might be a bit too much to ask from your plugin,
anyway, I really appreciate your work,

thanks again,

Jasper

Reality vs Virtual Reality?
Having dealt with some issues with graphic epoxy structures some questions come to mind:

What is the max thickness can you bend;
What plans are in work to establish knock down factors for bolt holes and when / how will structural allowables be establish and how. (Building and say it does not fall down is not acceptable);
Plywood by spec has voids so what plans are in place to insure stress risers can be mitigated. Ultra sound is used some times and since the strength is so much processed controlled vs metal what would be done to insure each panel meets some type of spec. I would guess some plywood that is made from radial sheared layers would be very different. Some same questions about the adhesive interface stress, heat and cold flow.
How does one handle the changes in allowables with moisture content;
You have a big hill to climb to get this concept accepted for general use. And then comes the question of analysis capability especially for stress. Have not done any search for plywood to see if any has well established allowables but with its use would hope so.
10/1 23:57 update Note: Did a quick search for plywood allowable stress. One of the returns was a APA plywood spec. One item would have immediate application to your effort. That is the min bend radius for various thickness and they have differnt for the cross grain ( 4 ft) and with grain ( 8 ft) evn for small thickness like 5/32 the numbers are big. ~ 3ft for cross and 8 ft with

bowlr

I have dl the Shape Bender, but have an error
"Error Loading File clf_shape_bender_loader.rb
No such file to load -- progressbar.rb"

when I open SU.

Chris Fullmer

Hi Barry, shape bender also requires a script called "progressbar" to work. You can download it from here:

(www.smustard.com)

Install that and hopefully that will do the trick!

Chris

charly2008

Hello Chris,

thank you for your wonderful plugin. It works fine except for the edge in the picture. With the previous version, there was no problem with such edges.

Charly

SahmElshamal

can you help me please < it doesnt work with me < it always says ( Error Loading File clf_shape_bender_loader.rb
No such file to load -- progressbar.rb)
whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Gaieus

Hi Salma,

Please, go back to page 1 in this topic and there is Progressbar.rb linked somewhere at the top. You also need to download/install that plugin so that this can work.

SahmElshamal

Hi Gaieus
thanx 4 ur reply

i will try what u said

SahmElshamal

No such file to load -- clf_shape_bender/clf_shape_bender.rbError Loading File clf_shape_bender_loader.rb
No such file to load -- clf_shape_bender/clf_shape_bender.rb

that message came after i downloaded the Progressbar.rb[
i have already downloaded the plugin and the Progressbar.rb , i work with SU 6

plz tell me the steps of installing a plugin
i cant find set up icon
so i copy - past it to the plugins of SU
is it right ???

thanx

SahmElshamal

it finally worked
!!!!!!
thank u ,moderator
thank u chris
great plugin

charly2008

Hi,

what I still don't understand is how do I control the length of the curved object?

Charly

Dave R

You have to make the arc the desired length. In your example, the arc needs to be 2.80 metres long. You can get the length from the Entity Info box after you've drawn it but that doesn't make it easy. How you arrive at that arc length will be the challenge. I wonder if someone could write a plugin that would take a given radius and arc length and draw the arc.

Generally I draw the arc first, measure its length and draw the straight line and the straight shape to match.

charly2008

Hi Dave,

thanks for your reply. I've done it with your method, but can still get a different length in the curved object.

Charly

Dave R

Ah. Yes. Put the original shape directly above the straight line. The plugin draws the bent shape with the same offset from the arc as you have between the original shape and the straight line.

charly2008

thanks Dave,

If you place the line exactly at the origin z-axis below the shape you will not have an offset.

Charly

Chris Fullmer

Its a game of percentages. Think of the arc as being 100%. Then your straight line, however long or short it is is also 100%. And it comes down to how the component matches up to the straight line. If the straight line is drawn precisely from end to end along the component (on the red axis of course), then you could say the component sits along 100% of the straight line. Therefore when it bends, it will become 100% the lengt of the arc.

arc = 1m
line = 1m
component sits on 100% of line (therefore is 1m long)
final shape will remain 1m

arc = 1m
line = 200m
component sits on 100% of line (200m long)
final bent shape will squish down to 1m

arc = 1m
line = .5m (50% of arc length)
component sits on 100% of line (0.5m long)
final bent shape will be 1m long

Dave R

@charly2008 said:

thanks Dave,

If you place the line exactly at the origin z-axis below the shape you will not have an offset.

Charly

Exactly.

LeoZ

Hai Chris
First I must say I am impressed with your work on Sketchup. I was very enthusiastic about your Shapebender. But I stumbled on some problems with it. I tried to make a “real” metric bold; a M10. That’s a 10mm bold with a thread of 1.5 mm /turn. I wanted to use the method of “fret2424” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKrWDNDd62c )
So I started with half a circle with a radius of 5 mm and I lifted one end 0.75 mm. That is not exactly right, but it was just to try.
I got some very strange results you might like to investigate.
Perhaps I am doing something wrong, but then I would like to know what.
Thanks

The result looks like this