We draw a lot of cables and many of them are of the ribbed type (see attached sketch)
If the cables are straight, we can just copy the ribbing no problem.
But ours are nearly all curved, and the ribbing has to follow the curve, so we end up either not adding them at all, or spending lots of time copying the ribs and rotating them roughly to fit the new positions. It never looks perfect this way.
I've long wanted to do a macro to make adding ribbing easier but can't find a way to make it work.
The way I would have done the macro it is to select the centre line of the curve, have the macro check the line at fixed intervals, working out the angle of the line at each point, copying the ribs from the previous positions (as you don't seem to be able to draw arcs in Isodraw) moving and rotating them to each new angle.
I can't find any way to work out the angle of a polyline or bezier at any given point along it's length so don't know if this way is possible.
I wonder if anyone else has any ideas I might not have thought of that I could try?
Perhaps some completely different approach? A macro command I don't know about? Or even the maths required to work out positions along a curve from the angles of the bezier points and handles (too complex for me)?
Even a semi-manual macro would be a great help - where you click on the curve at each point you want a rib to go and the macro just works out the angle and adds a single rib there.
