Curious if anyone knows about a ruby script or is willing to play around with the idea of creating one that does the following:

• prompts you to select a face (or group of faces, this could be selection by hand or an already grouped set)
• prompts you to select a line (or group of lines, this also could be selection by hand or an already grouped set)
  -the scripts then takes the faces (or group of faces) and puts instances of them at every vertex in the line selected in the step before (like a preview mode showing each set of faces at all the vertices in shadow, then perhaps a toggle to also preview the tweening based on the orientations of thefaces at each vertex)
• at this point you can change by hand the orientation, position, rotation of the faces (as a group) at each vertex however you like. I also imagine a toggle mode to this where you can mimic the movements to the faces at verticies farther along the line away from the original or just modify each set of faces at each vertex individually.
• once you are happy with everything, you set the script in motion and it basically stitches or "tweens" faces between every group of faces at every vertex along the line.

With a script like this, you can overcome the follow me tool's shortcomings of twisting objects as they move along a path(line) that changes in more than one plane. Anyone?

Perhaps I am just blind to it, but I found no real solution to the problem I am facing. Can you be a little more specific as to where you think the solution to my problem lies? Imagine a very complex profile shape that goes around the second floor balcony, comes to the stairs, curves downward and then starts to follow the steps down, which are curved and decend, where the rail then returns to a flat plane and curls outward onto itself to end the railing. I do not see any correlation between my situation and the curved walls in the search results you gave me, although I found a very nice push/pull ruby script

I have to imagine I am not the first person trying to make a handrail for stairs with anything but a circle for a profile....

Hey guys,

I have been a silent observer here for some time. I work in a very high-end architectural firm in CT and 95% of my day is creating 3D models and renderings. I have experience in the 3D and VR worlds professionally going back as far as 1993 and SGI Onyx boxes, for those who remember those lovely machines. My personal experience however precedes that much further. Hopefully I would like to branch out on my own and work for myself but have no idea how to do so.... anyways to my topic.....

I am trying to use follow me to articulate a continuous handrail for an interior rendering only to find myself frustrated at this point. I have a manufacturer-specfic profile for the rail, which I attempt to send along a 3d line. As the rail turns and starts to dive down the staircase, it slowly starts to twist so by the time is reaches the bottom of the stairs its rotated 90 degrees... not good. How can I avoid this, fix this or is there a way to loft along the path and simply define the profile at points to keep it from twisting on its way down?

I am sure I could model elsewhere and just move on, but I am trying an experiment with current work to see if I can utilize SketchUp for all the modeling and pre-render work, doing finals with Maxwell. Any and all help is greatly appreciated!