Re-joining

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debenriver
Posts: 696
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:19 pm
Location: Maine USA and Suffolk England
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Re-joining

Post by debenriver »

Hi Eric

I know I've mentioned this before, but I do think it would be a great addition to the tool kit on RC:

The ability to re-join a polycurve that has been unjoined. This is especially useful when you have several long polycurves close to each other as you do in yacht design. Like this:
Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 17.00.45.png
Screen Shot 2014-10-04 at 17.00.45.png (159.32 KiB) Viewed 5302 times
The long curved lines derive from the naval architecture program. They are waterlines, so they are used to delineate the extent of horizontal surfaces at differing heights. I mostly only need to use a section of them in different places in the boat (like for bunk tops, galley tops, floorboards and so on). They also delineate the outside of the hull, the outside of the cabin sides and so on. I often use the Parallel tool to draw a second curved line, to indicate thickness (say 9mm or 12mm). The boat shown is about 7000mm long – so you can see that the parallel lines are proportionally very close together.

I select the line I want, break it into polylines using ⌥⌘L. Then cut out the bits I don't want. And maybe do something at the ends of the bit I do want, like join them to a vertical line. Then I want to join the part of the curved line that I want up again, so that I can draw a parallel to it, or do something else. This is very hard to do using any of the Select tools, because you get other bits of the drawing caught up in the select lasso. It's specially hard as the lines are very close together and several may have been unjoined as I work.

What would be really good is to be able to select one of the lines that make up the continuous part of the polyline and have a "Join" function (perhaps ⌘J) which would run along and select all the lines making up the continuous part of the polyline. Then ⌥⌘P would turn them into a polyline again.

ClarisCad had this facility and it was immensely useful. Not just for what I tend to do but for many aspects of making a drawing. It works by selecting any lines whose ends are joined to another line (whether they were originally a polyline, polygon, or have been joined by using E-attraction). And you don't necessarily have to turn them back to a polycurve/polygon or whatever – you can just group them, or change their color for later selection etc etc.

The other major use is for preparing DXF files for CNC cutting. It is hard to check if in fact all the lines to be cut are continuous, or if there is a discontinuity, or maybe two lines in certain places. Using ⌘J would select all the lines that were joined to a particular line. Grouping those or changing their color would show up discontinuities, double lines and so on.

Sorry – this has been rather a long post! :D

George
Eric Pousse
Posts: 1064
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 12:31 pm
Location: Tours - France

Re: Re-joining

Post by Eric Pousse »

Thank you George !

⌘J added.
Eric Pousse
debenriver
Posts: 696
Joined: Sat Dec 03, 2011 9:19 pm
Location: Maine USA and Suffolk England
Contact:

Re: Re-joining

Post by debenriver »

Wow!

What else can I say :D

It works perfectly! And it happened so quickly too!

Thank you Eric.

George
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