2

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You have to wind the wire rope on the left at number 1 and then wind it again at number 2, is there a way to draw a curve and follow it?

Duarte Farrajota Ramos
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Maldodook
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2 Answers2

2

add cylinder

R X 90

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make sure your add-on is enabled

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Shift A -> Curve -> Curve Spirals -> Archimedian

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change settings like this:

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Tab -> edit mode

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select this vertex

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E Z 8

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Tab

Shift A -> Mesh -> Cylinder

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Tab -> CTRL R

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Tab

select Curve

CTRL A -> Location

select cylinder, add modifier:

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enter 50 in z location, keyframe location on frame 1

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enter 30 in z location , keyframe location at frame 50

result:

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Chris
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2

A couple of notes to add to @Chris's very comprehensive answer.

  • If this is a friction drive, the animation of the cable is simple. It's just a translation of the cable along its deformation axis, down a static curve, by which it is deformed.
  • The curve can be constructed to existing spools, by E extruding the ends of a Curve Spirals > Archimedean curve, taking the thickness of the cable into account:

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  • The distance the rope has to be translated per revolution of the large spool with a spiral diameter of D is strictly sqrt((D*pi)^2 + h^2), where h is the height per wind of the spiral. But if h is small, D*pi will probably do.
  • The rate at which the small spool with diameter d must rotate is D/d times the rate at which the large spool rotates.

If you need the animation to loop...

There are some added constraints, if you don't want miles of rope.

  • The pattern on the rope must match at the beginning and end of the temporal loop. In the example below, the loop is at a 180⁰ turn of the large spool. Perhaps the easiest way to achieve the match is to make the cable an array of elements, each one of which has a length of D*pi (or, strictly, again, the expression above) and ensure a match between the ends of the elements, successfully merged by the Array modifier.
  • So there is no jump in the animation of the small spool, its visible features must loop at the same time as those of the large spool. Most simply, d can divide D by a whole number.

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Robin Betts
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