Need help finding a solution besides eye-balling it

After taking a closer look, the problem my extension solved had one additional constraint which made the solution work. It won’t do yours without a complete rewrite. Sorry!

A little off topic but shoot all this math is hurting my brain. Hope you all get it figured out……

We can be sure of this:

Maybe here?

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Thank you for the responses, when I get to work on Monday I will read all of this and make sure to clarify since it seems some are confused as I didn’t give enough detail. Thanks!

Spot on, but as I got this wrong twice because I didn’t understand the question, I want 1 more go at solving it with mathematics please :grinning:

So we now have 2 right angle triangles for which we know the length of 1 side, so we can calculate angle A, and therefore lengths Y & Z where Y + Z = 36

Length Y = Tan A x 46.5

Length Z = Cos A x 1.5

So angle A = 36.80996478 degrees where Y = 34.79905923 and Z = 1.200940767

The length of the rectangle = Length Y / Sin A = 58.07946731

If we setout using these dimensions everything fits perfectly as @Sturnus has shown

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See the yellow triangles in the image a few posts above. I Just din’t read the height right. B+a = 36"

You guys both get an A or a 10 as we do here.

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Thank you for the help so far, I think I am understanding your math correctly. I took a second to color code a version of what I am trying to accomplish.

The pink 1.5" square cannot move. The corner circled in red is also not allowed to move.
The yellow rectangle (1.5" sized) is allowed to rotate from the red circle, and it can become longer in length to reach the measurements I need. For this example we can use 48" x 36" to solve the issue.

My goal is to have a simple way of solving this issue each time because I have to draw a good amount of these.

I see you changed your math in these two posts if you could let me know which would fit this example, if you have already solved my problem! Thanks

Posted a clarification below.

This is what I need to be able to find in a simpler way then eyeballing

@epekaarccw

Hi

Just so I am completely clear, we are saying the rectangle pivots at a point 1.5 inches to the right of the top left corner, and the only variables will be the height and the width of the constraints, i.e. 48 inches and 36 inches in your example. If this is the case my last post gives the correct solution.

If you set everything out using 36.80996478 degrees for angle A and 58.07946731 inches for the length of the rectangle your constraint points will be met.

If I was doing this regularly I would use this simple spreadsheet. The only value you change directly within the spreadsheet is the width constraint in Cell B1. Here I am setting the width in B1 to 48 then using the Solver Add-In to make B5 = 36 by changing the angle in B2. Do you use Microsoft Excel? Can I email a copy of the spreadsheet to you?

Cheers

Solver

That is correct, now lets say instead I use 2" material. Is there a way to change that in the excel sheet?

Please email it to me that would be great,

I really appreciate it

(I do not use excel so I am not familiar with the controls etc.)

You can have as many variables as you need. As it stands the formula for length Z in Cell B4 is written as =COS(RADIANS(B2))*1.5 where 1.5 represents the rectangles height, but you could change the 1.5 value to 2 manually or you could make the rectangle height a variable and change that. It will all make sense when you study the various formulas. Just remember you have to load the Solver Add In to find the solution which is pretty straightforward, File>Options>Add-ins>Solver Add-in>OK

Email sent:

Best of luck :grinning:

Best practice on a bulletin board is not to put your email in a public post. Best to use Private Message (PM) for that. In fact he could send you the file that way without even using email.

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@RTCool

Good point! That was my fault for asking.

Meh, Im sure it is fine. Ill remove it to make you happy though :slight_smile:

It doesn’t matter to me. Getting spam email is inevitable anyway, but posting it publicly just invites more. That’s up to you.

Cool! So when I just tried eyeballing it in PowerCADD, I came up with 36.81619°, an error in the fourth significant digit. When I started college, I was using a slide rule that could only be expected to produce 2 significant digits on anything.

What’s not clear to me is whether it can be solved for exclusively with equations, or whether an iterative process like Excel’s Goal Seek is the only way.

I have a feeling it may be one of those problems that sometimes doesn’t have an exact solution - a bit like PI, so iteration is the only way, and its up to you how accurate you want to make it. As you probably know Solver lets you choose the Solve method and change the constraint precision.

Having said that - when I worked in an aircraft drawing office many years ago I used to struggle with certain equations and I would spend the whole weekend coming up with an answer, but we had a genius mathematician in the office who would then simplify my longwinded answer into a single line of code without any apparent effort whatsoever :grinning:

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