Move point group to position vector

[Rine-Hart]

I keep banging my head against a wall with this and know the solution may be super simple. 

I have a vellum wire sim where the wires snap to pts on columns. I would like to have a certain number of points at the end of the wires align to the normal of the point to which they are snapping, instead of dangling at weird angles. 

I would love to get this running in the solver to keep the overall wire sim looking smooth. My brain keeps farting over the vector math and now I must rest.

Any direction/assistance is always greatly appreciated. Also understand if this solution can be found on another topic 

 

[fencer]

Think how it works in the real world. If you need to align ends with the columns, maybe it must be so initially before doing wire sim?

[Rine-Hart]

Thank you so much! 

Fortunately, Houdini is not the real world, it's vector math magic. 

What I would like is to understand is the linear algebra behind moving a group of simulated points to align to a directional vector. 

I apologize if that wasn't clear from the above. Any assistance with the math involved in this would be greatly appreciated.

[fencer]

The real world 

[fencer]

Myabe this one. wire_align_connections.hipnc

[Rine-Hart]

Holy Cannolli!! This is a brilliantly elegant real world solution! Much better that the 'fix it in post' hack job I was thinking. 

This gives me a tremendous amount to work with. Let me try and implement some of this and I may return with more questions. 

Thank you so very much for taking the time to build this out. Greatly appreciated!

[Rine-Hart]

Thank you again for this reference. Wondering how I might get this alignment from both ends? 

I've tried a few things within the for loop, like lerping between 2 different P's, but have kind of hit a wall. 

Again, very greatly appreciated.

[fencer]

wire_align_connections_v02.hipnc

Edited 10 hours ago by fencer