On Fri, 03 Sep 1999 17:55:54 -0500, Larry Fontaine wrote:
>I used half-torus for the springs in my LEGO auto chassis. The problem is,
>unless you skew them, you can only use halves and no smaller or the end
>surfaces won't be vertical. And with half-torus, you get close to a helix,
>but it's up-close noticible that it's not. However, you can skew in POV,
>so maybe that's the way to go.


Why do the ends have to be vertical, exactly?

Try my spring include file or my torspline include file at 
http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html for a couple examples of 
interesting things you can do with lots of toruses.  The spring 
include file is old (POV 3.0) so you'll need to make a few small
syntax changes, but it uses four toruses per revolution.  If you feed
the torspline file a series of points in a helical shape, it will
obligingly generate the corresponding helix.  It can even do a 
conical spring if that's what you need.  You *might* have to 
calculate an appropriate starting direction to smooth out the
"wrinkles" though.

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