Thoughts about flexible parts

[Travis Cobbs]

I can sympathise with both sides of the argument, but I have a counter-proposal. What Roland wants to do is standard 3D graphics behavior, which is extruding a flat shape along a path. It seems to me that the best solution is to have the end cap stored into a separate sub-part, and he can use that to produce the extruded shape. Then all the polygons along the "side" of the tube would be generated directly, but the end cap itself would be a sub-part. That way, if the geometry of the end cap changes, his program would automatically get the change. This only works for shapes that have flat ends, but since he's talking about doing this for pneumatic tubes and flex tubes, those both have flat ends. It has the additional advantage that it would work for arbitrarily complex shapes, as long as they are smooth in the extruded direction. (So it obviously wouldn't work for chains, treads, etc.)