I doubt this is the correct forum to put this, but I couldn't quite figure out the best place to put it. There isn't any forum for difficulties, or things behaving in an unexpected way.

I'm having some difficulties with the Sweeper plugin. Since it's not a 3rd party plugin anymore, I didn't know where else to turn. I'm trying to extrude (Sweep) an outline over a very large path. Very large. It's for a conveyor belt system inside a massive warehouse.

I've included some screenshots, with the following explanations...

1) The outline I want extruded. Nothing complicated or hard... it was drawn on the Front view...

2) A top down view of the path I wish to extrude to. I've tried with curved points (with a magnitude of 4%) and with peaked corners. As you can see, in comparison to my outline, it's a very very large path.

3) This shows a top down view of the resulting sweep object. You'll notice it's not really adhering to my path at all. Close to it, but not along it as I expected.

4) This shows the same path, and it's misalignment. I expected it to be along the path from a height perspective as well, but it's not even close.

5) Another top down view of the path, this time the outline I wish to extrude has been moved. This is to demonstrate another difficulty, which leads into the next pic

6) After the outline was moved, here's the resulting sweeper object. Just moving the outline screws up the extrusion this badly??

I have been able to use sweeper for smaller extrusions, and I'm wondering if this is due to the size of the path I'm trying to extrude along. I suppose I'll have to find another way of doing what I hope to accomplish, but I was hoping somebody might have a solution or at least an explanation of what's going wrong...

You should be okay on the size but there is a setting wrong somewhere.
I didn't quite follow your images/description.

Just taking a stab at the problem here...

Make sure you have 'center on Group' selected.

If you can post a screenshot of your Sweeper panel settings that'd tell the tale.

Thanx Rodney... I've followed the Sweeper video at http://www.hash.com/sweeper over and over and over, trying to figure out what was going wrong, but never once changed the setting you mentioned, because the video left it at Model... I guess I should've been experimental and just changed it regardless, but was trying to do it "the right way"...

I wonder how they got the extrusion to work correctly in the video tutorial if it was set incorrectly... It was the 2nd tutorial, at http://www.hash.com/sweeper/tutorials/sweepertutorial2.html

Thanx again...

Um... you mean that actually worked!?!?

It did...

I believe the cross sections were created at 0, 0, 0. Any offset from 0,0,0 will result in an offset along the path. I couldn't tell from your posts where the cross sections had been created.

EDIT - I take it back - it does look like the cross section was created offset from 0.

0,0,0 is the center of the path any shape drawn at or away from 0,0,0 will follow suit along the path.

Are you using A:M for an industrial application?

David

No... I am building a conveyor system to use in an animation, but it's not meant to be overly realistic, it is meant for a cartoon-ey render of a warehouse interior...

I eventually did get my problems resolved and the conveyor built. Not exactly as I wanted or expected it, but workable...

Any cross-section you build will ALWAYS have it's 0, 0, 0 location on the spline you are sweeping on.

i.e. if you build something off of the 0, 0, 0 point it will be offset that much from your spline when you sweep it.

That was the only problem I could see with your pictures above.

Sweeper was performing EXACTLY as it is written and is one of the main points in the tutorial.

Move your cross-section down so it's 0, 0, 0 point is somewhere in the middle of the cross-section and try sweeping, it should work like a charm.