Dear SketchUppers, I’m trying to use Fredo’s ‘Radial Bend’ from the FredoScale plugin to curve my staircase. The bending is done superbly, compared to Shape Bender, but I’m having a problem with the radius.
Btw, here’s the same, done with Shape Bender. Although I can bend it to a desired radius, the geometry is exploded inside, so my railings, stairs and balusters are all one single geometry and it’s quite messy compared to Fredo’s.
No. You can’ specify the radius. In Shape Bender the thing getting bent gets stretcher or shortened to match the length of the curve. With Fredo6’s Radial Bend, you would need to make the straight run of steps the same length as the length of the arc with the desired radius to get that radius in the bent curved staircase. In your case you would also start at the bottom left corner of your stairs with the bending.
Thanks for the quick reply as always Dave. I see why it can’t be done.
Do you perhaps know of any other plugins that might be helpful in this situation, that I could try out?
All of the other extensions I can think of will do basically the same as radial bend which means the radius is the by-product of the length of the object being bent and the angle of the bend. Shape Bender is kind of odd because it does modify the length of the bent thing to match the length of the curve. The probably with your stairs and Shape Bender is the the depth of the treads and the shapes of the balusters won’t be right if the thing gets stretched of shrunk.
I downloaded the plugin to give it a try but it seems it’s not working. I have 1 component and 1 vertical line but when I preselect them and click on the plugin name to start it, nothing happens.
Make your component and set the axis at the point of rotation.
Create an edge for the height, divide that edge by the number of stairs, weld those edges back together.
Select only the component and the welded edge.
Run plugin.
I see the problem, you move the axis rather than changing the component axis.
Right click on the component and select Change Axes.
If that doesn’t fix it I’ll look at your model.