I believe TIG already has a true tangents extension, but I suppose if we are shooting to show how SU could get serious about circles, that logic could be merged in. Circle-edge shouldn’t be too hard and given it, circle polygon follows pretty easily.
I just found an interesting edge-case/bug: if the circles are in Groups or Components, the tool still lets you select them but places the guide points incorrectly. I suspect this has to do with the difference between the coordinates in the ComponentDefinition and those in the ComponentInstance/Group in the model, but I’ll have to investigate further, since grouping the “guide” circles might be desirable to keep them from interacting with other geometry.
It seems that construction circles was one of the first feature requests I remember reading about in the forums 8 years ago.
We should add construction polygons, to the list as well.
But as someone said a construction component can be saved and inserted anytime needed, then scaled, moved, rotated, etc. But it still would be nice to have these guide types as basic drawing element classes.
Indeed, the issue I noted earlier arises when the selected arcs are not in the same edit context (model, Group or Component). The attached revision accepts selections only if they are in the same context and puts the new guide points into that same context.
I considered allowing different contexts, but there are several problems with that. At a basic level, the plugin gets much more complicated because it has to deal with Transforming everything into the same coordinates. It would also no longer be clear what context the new guide points should be placed in.
SB_intersect_circles.rbz (2.4 KB)
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Hi Steve, hi folks.
The method I proposed dates back from 2005, before SU could be improved with plugins. Of course, a plugin is probably the most efficient way to go. Didier Bur wrote such a plugin in the past but I think it doesn’t work with newer versions of SU. I tried your Tool Intersect plugin and it seems to be working if I respect the limitation that the circles are all in the same context and coplanar. Deleting the circles is quickly done when the intersection points are drawn.
Good job Steve.
Best regards.
Jean
Just to add my YES PLEASE to a circle guide tool natively. Have been waiting for it - would make drawing up surveys easier.
I was thinking that something similar could be emulated with a plugin, though I can already see the potential pitfalls.
Tested in v2015, and seems to work fine.
I created a linked topic in the developers category for further discussion of my plugin (see earlier message for the link, or look at “Circle intersections plugin”.