Originally Posted by
damon.sidel
Excellent questions.
I would like it to be fully parametric. Why? Because (a) it is a challenge and (b) when we do visualization of these things, we often go for realism and I've already been asked to show it in a few positions. For getting this thing constructed, I wouldn't bother with this being parametric, but I think it will help my sanity during our design process.
It doesn't have to be accurate. I was thinking a parabola because it is a mathematical shape I could deal with more easily. That said, it could be a spline or a series of arcs, or whatever to approximate the shape. As long as it looks realistic in many positions of opened vs. closed, that's good enough. Attached is an adaptive component that starts to get somewhere. The formulas that control the "droop" are totally wrong and make for an unconvincing change. This may be a dead end, but I thought I'd share it.