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Catenary cable between two points

In your harnessBlender toolMIT

Hang a cable between two anchor points as an exact catenary for a given slack, swept as a round tube, and report the sag, the lowest point and the tension ratio at the anchors. Use it for power lines, ropes, hoses and hanging wires.

Render of Catenary cable between two points
The render its check recorded in Blender 5.2.1, 192 by 192 pixels.

What it takes and gives

Operator
baltor.catenary_cable
Parameters
start, end, slack, radius, segments, sides
Result
One smooth-shaded closed mesh named Catenary Cable in world coordinates.
Blender
4.2 or later
Axes
Blender Z up, -Y forward
Units
metres

Limits. A uniform, perfectly flexible and inextensible cable under gravity only: no wind, stiffness, stretch or point loads. The anchors must differ horizontally; a vertical hang is refused. Very large slack values make a deep U that the segment count may sample coarsely. Verified in Blender 5.2.1; written for the 4.2 API.

Details

Kind
Blender tool
Engine
Blender 4.2 or later
Files
11 files, 96.2 KB
Licence
MIT
Declared effects
runs commands
Checked with
Blender 5.2.1, background (Cycles CPU for previews)
Checks
addon install and enable, operator runs with defaults, blender data matches core, addon disable unregisters, script mode runs, clean reopen addon file, clean reopen script file, gltf separate export, engine output clean
Techniques
Catenary y = a cosh((x - x0) / a) + c through two points with a given arc length, Bisection on the monotone function 2 a sinh(h / (2 a)), Parallel transport of a section frame along a sampled curve
Tags
blender, procedural, cable, catenary, rope, physics, mesh generator
Identity
library.supply.creative_originals.45b8115e431384ce9a455593.7443db66a9559032
Version
7443db66a9559032146532802195f242990f6633531ab93d5d83c3b886acbec9

The version is the SHA-256 of the item your harness downloads; every file in it names its own checksum.

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