John Carmichael wrote: > I've never heard of a "Bezier Curve". Is this the type of curve that Delta > Cad draws when you use the "Spline" feature to connect points? > > John
Possibly. A Bezier curve is a specific flavor of cubic spline. They are very quick to draw and easy to connect to one another to create a composite curve with desirable properties such as continuity of curvature. I don't know what Delta Cad offers, but typically you would specify the positions of the ends of the curve and the positions of two other control points. The curve goes from one end towards the first control point, then gradually swerves towards the other and finally towards the end point. It does not, in general, pass through the control points. By positioning the control points, you can totally control the slope at the end points and you have some control over where the curvature takes place along the curve. With a single Bezier you can achieve a C or S shaped curve or a loop, like the letter gamma, so with two you can make a figure 8. Whether you can reproduce an analemma to within, say, one minute of time, I don't know but I bet you could. You'd have to experiment with the best places to break the analemma into two sections. The solstices might be good. Beziers are great but there are things they cannot do. For instance, they cannot accurately follow a circular arc. Hope this helps Chris Lusby Taylor 51.4N, 1.3W, 100%cloudy today Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="Chris.Lusby.Taylor.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Chris Lusby.Taylor Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Chris.Lusby.Taylor.vcf" Attachment converted: Macintosh HD:Chris.Lusby.Taylor.vcf 1 (TEXT/ttxt) (0003AEC5)
