Freeforms in VBA

[profray]

I have tried the freeformbuilder example in Excel VBA 2007. It works fine, however the help file cannot be correct since it is redundant. Go to the FreeformBuilder.AddNodes Method and look at the Description on the right. According to MS help, when using the msoEditingCorner, X1 and Y1 are the same thing (I'm pretty sure that its just a typo here), but what about X2,Y2,X3,Y3 ? They must be something different but have identical descriptions! I have tried to write a simple routine where I read values for all these arguments and perform the addnodes method and it is not obvious. Anyone have a correct version of this help item, or better yet a workable example where you can specify the two ends of a single freeform segment, then specify the slopes at the ends. I want to make a little diagram of a beam bending (picture a flattend out S-curve lying on its side, or a flat parabola, depending on the action of the beam)
Thanks in advance.

 

[profray]

My objective was to draw a beam as you might see in a building frame, before the walls are built up. I could calculate how each beam in the building would deflect (move up/down, left/right) and rotate. I wanted the freeform object to reflect the deflections and rotations.
The problem was that MS does not give a good explanation on how to send this data to a freeform object and draw it, the sequence of data depends on how much data you send the addnode method.

Freeform is the best shape to do this, but the data was very difficult to learn. See the pdf I posted above.

 

[Norie]

I looked at the PDF but it didn't seem to illustrate any problem - perhaps I'm missing something though.

As for Help not giving a decent explanation, what's new?

I'm still trying to work out how to use Data Tables based on the examples for the topic in the help files.

Is what you are trying to do some sort of transformation using matrices?

 

[profray]

The pdf was the solution to the problem. I was trying to send the data to the freeform addnodes method. It took me about four hours to figure it out and would have taken less without the help file. I will post my final spreadsheet at the same place when I finish (sometime today I think). It's an exercise for my students to figure out how a building deforms under different loading conditions.