Issue with Lines in Plasticity · Creative 3D Community

Issue with Lines in Plasticity

I'm currently working on a 1928 Mercedes SSK and am at the stage where I am creating vents on the cars hood/bonnet. The issue is that the vents on the top of the bonnet follow its curve i so hole covers are also curved - and while making the vent cutouts is very straightforward, the vent covers have to be created individually - all 35 of them! On the face of it this looks pretty straightforward, but in fact it isn't, due to the curvature, as most reference lines I have to create need to be drawn normal to the vents leading (long) edge and as Plasticity has little/no functionality when it comes to drawing lines normal to either a surface or edge. My question is, does anybody have a method of drawing lines that are normal to a surface, or ? For me this missing functionality is a great shortcoming of Plasticity as I constantly need/want to work using normals, but with plasticity we're stuck with the old XYZ axes and their limited use in modeling.

PS you can draw a line normal to a curved surface by selecting a location on the surface first, but if you imprint a reference line onto surface and want to draw a line normal from the end of the imprinted line it doesn't work as Plasticity doesn't 'see' the surface, only the reference line.

I've created the vents on the bonnet/hood and it took an inordinate amount of time. I've attached an image showing the final results of this mammoth effort and am about to take something for the headache it's caused me.

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