Constraint Concept

I wanted to share my thoughts about the concept of constraints, because I think it is a valuable concept.

Right now I can see some tools which are kind of "special cases" of a more general tool. I give an example:

The basic incremental design definition is direction (angle) and distance (length) to construct a series of points.

The "Point at Distance along line" is a pre-interpreted special case, where the angle is dynamically defined (restricted) by another point. The "Point along perpendicular" is a 90 degree variant of the "Point at Distance along line" tool.

A similar analogy is the "Perpendicular point along line" with is a 90 degree special case of "Point intersect line and axis".

Let's put this into a constraint syntax:

The "Point at Distance along line" would translate to Basic Point Tool with a "collinear" constraint. Actually the collinear constraint is a special case of the colinearity of the tangents of loose ends, which also covers curve/axis endpoints.

Another pattern seen above is the 90 degree angle, which would resolve to a "perpendicular" constraint (of the tangents of loose ends - to cover also curves and arcs).

Another constraint aspect is related to grainline discussion, we could interpret those as, horizontal, vertical constraints (anything in between can be modelled as an horizontal,vertical constraint upon an angled help line. Those constraints would obviously not constrain single points in their point tree, but would constrain a model against the underlying coordinate system's X and Z axis, defining the unique allowed offsets of any angle within a model.

Therefore, I can see two constraint types: - Line/Tangent Constraints (Points being the endpoint of such) - Model Constraints against the underlying coordinate system

On a note on printed fabrics: In the above model, if a tissue has a special printed colour pattern and we need to match those color patterns in a plotting setup, then we can define this via an x,z offset constraint against the 0 point of the underlying coordinate system.

Just some conceptual ideas, my 2 cents.

Comments (2)