I thought I had it figured out. After creating the pipes and applying Intersect with Model, what's the right way to separate the tubes. I've tried Explode but when I try moving one tube away from the other, it drags along the intersection.

Very nice, thanks. If the unwrap tool had a mode to just one-click on a component and have it unwrap the whole thing, that would be awesome. It's funny how we always say, "that's nice, but it would be great if it also did...", then someone writes a plugin to do that, then we say, "that's nice, but if it did just this..." It never ends, lol.

Okay, to show I'm not lazy, I figured out everything except the unwrap, which seems to be a add-on. True?

It would be very nice to have! I'm very interested what you used.

Very cool! A few questions. What tool did you use to create the tubing? Did you make a circle, remove the ID, the use the extrusion tool, or the "follow line" tool, or a plugin? I finally found the Intersect with Model - nice. But how do I remove the one tube from the other after removing the overlaping portion? And finally, where's the unwrap tool?

A annoying problem I will have is creating 3D pipes (tubes) that have true round cross-sections to their lines. I've already run into problems with that, ending up with elipses instead of true circles. I suspect there's an elegant way to do it but don't know how. I hate to do it all the hard way, thenfind there's a simple way! I "think" the Make Pipe plugin takes care of that.

What would be awesome is if there's a tool or plugin that allows me to highlight a line drawing and change the lines to tubes, then do as you show. The trouble is that the only plugins I've found group (I think) the lines so I can't delete the intersecting parts... or maybe I can, I just need to work on it more.

Thank you very much, what you've done is what I'm trying to do. The unwrap feature, once I find it, is very cool - as long as the two ends of the tube are properly indexed!

FWIW, here's the last car I designed, http://www.kimini.com/ and here's the car I'm designing now, http://www.midlana.com/

That's exactly what I want to do. Thank you very much and I will try your suggestion!

I'm designing a car chassis using tubes. In many places, two or more tubes intersect in 2 or 3 dimensions, with the intersecting surfaces having goofy shapes and angles. It would be GREAT to draw these tubes as lines, convert them to tubes, and let SU figure out where the tube surfaces intersect. This much I can do using the various line-to-tube tools and plugins.

The problem is that after I create these junctions, I want to show the cut lines on each tube. The trouble is that when I back a tube away from the junction, it returns to its original cylindrical shape. I need to apply some tool or techinque so that the intersecting end stays in place so I can dimension it. The goal is to produce drawings for each tube, showing each end and how it must be cut.

How can I do this? Is there a plugin available? The trouble is that I don't even know what to search for in order to see what's out there. Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

Okay, I found and downloaded DimAngle, forcing it into Plugins. It works, cool! The only goofy thing is that it places the angle text quite far from the target, but hey, I'm happy.

Thanks for the help guys!

I better confirm something, do plugins work with the free version of SU, or is some of the functionality disabled?

About your reply above, at the moment I have angle_between.rb and tube_along_path.rb but can only find the latter. I'm not sure where, if anywhere, the angle_between function is supposed to appear. I don't see it under Dimension, Tool, or Plugins.

Thanks for the help!

Thanks, huh, it's a puzzle. More irritating than having to force them into the Plugin Folder is that once they're in there, so far only one of the six appears under my Plugin pulldown from within SU.

I've searched and not found anyone having this problem. I'm using Windows Vista, no doubt part of the problem.

I want to add plugins, so I find them online, right-click-save-as into the Plugin folder. The first problem is that the plugins don't appear! I try saving again, making sure it's going into the correct folder above, and it says it can't because it's already there, but for some crazy reason it isn't visible. I found I can force the issue by downloading them into a different folder then copying them over, but why do I have to do that?

The second problem is that of the six plugins I've forced into the plugin folder (as seen in Windows Explorer), only one of them appears in the Plugin pulldown from within SU. Any idea why? I really want to get these plugins because some of them, like being able to dimension angles, are a requirement of my project.

Thank you very much for your help!

[edit] I should add that as far as I know, I have full Admin authority.