Retrieve the plane of a reference frame ?

[lionpeloux]

Hello,

Is it possible to retrieve the plane associated with a "reference frame" parameter ? I cannot see any component that can do that at the moment. Maybe a direct conversion to a GH_Plane in the future would be practical ?

Moreover, how would you follow a frame that is attached to a given parent mechanism. For instance, how can you retrieve $ROBROOT at a specific PTP configuration/target in case of a linear track ?

Many thanks for your support

[thibaultschwartz]

Rhino does not support nested/relative positioning, so extracting the reference frame might not mean a lot if it's moving / if a parent reference changed. The monitoring of reference positions over time is certainly something which we will make public, it will be part of the execution supervision tools which will be released at a later time. I am not fond of the implicit cast approach shown above, as it will not refresh properly if the state of the reference changes. In stationary reference cases, you are already specifying the frame of the reference, so you already know where it is. So I don't understand the reason to convert it back.

[lionpeloux]

Ok. But then how would you simulate the rotation of a part attached to (lets say) a turn table ?

[thibaultschwartz]

That's all done when the simulation runs. We'll post external axis tutorials when we fix a last few bugs, but the logic is the following:

• declare your parts and define their relationships using connections (Create Joint -> Connection)
• when joints are actuated or when the locations of one or more parts change for some reason, all impacted objects (parts linked by connections or joints) get their state updated. The display is then called to show this new state
• the "Execute" component has an extra input called "Environment", which takes objects to be redrawn systematically while the simulation runs