I have a group of points (a plane for example) and I want to project them all to a plane (simplest case == WORKPLANE). Is there some smart way to do it all at once (a.k.a. "the JEFMAN way") or is it only possible with a loop? I haven't found anything yet...
The object of this is to create a secondary tangent plane perpendicular to the primary by the following method:
- measure the secondary plane
- project all points up/down to the primary (WORKPLANE)
- construct a tangent plane from the original plane points + the projected points (guaranteed to be perpendicular to the primary as that is our projection direction)
As a follow-up question: How can I use an ARRAY variable in the same way as .HIT[...] in the construction of a tangent plane?
I looked at this quickly today , and don't see any "off the shelf" way to do it. So all I have is a smarmy "Use Quindos?" answer.
I think point construction command(s) would have to be enhanced to support using the points of a set, instead of the "centroid".
Also tried the constructed point projection in a loop, using a 300 point scan - thinking "it can't be that bad". Then sat there and watched pc-dmis draw the constructed points on the screen during execution at about the same speed as my Radio Shack TRS-80 drew graphics on my TV screen in the early 90's. I then took the constructed point out of the loop. It took pc-dmis about 5 seconds to do nothing more than count to 300. So I get it now.
I'll be really interested in seeing how this gets solved.
I can't get it to calculate the correct plane on my test data (5 points in YMINUS on front of the Hexagon part) - it is stuck on the wrong side of the measuring points (yplus direction instead of yminus)...