Hi all,
I'm struggling a little bit with this, so I thought I would throw it out to see if anyone has any brilliant ideas.
I'm working on an animation of a tool that I built to measures he ID and OD of steel pipe. The tool get's inserted in the pipe and the operator turns a crank on which are mounted laser sensors for measuring distance. A data acquisition system collects the data for post processing later.
There is a cable mounted to the end of the crank handle which is connected to a bag on the operator's shoulder. I've modeled the cable with a spline and swept it, but as the crank rotates through it's throw, the geometry of the spline can get quite unpredictable. Ideally I would like the length of the cable (spline) to remain constant with the loop in the cable changing as the crank turns.
Any bright ideas on how to reliably do this?
Thanks,
=========================================================================== Chris