Catenary curve

Hello

LibreCAd is a great program and I have just used it to make all my drawings for a planning application. Thank you!

Now I want to make drawings for another proposed development and I want to draw a catenary arc for a straw-bale house design in which the the rendered straw bales form the walls and roof of the structure.

Anyway, is it possible to draw a catenary curve in LibreCAD?

I don't know if the 'Plot' plugin would help - but I don't know how to install plugins and I can't find a tutorial that I can understand. I am running LibreCAD on Solus Linux but could install it on Windows if that makes a difference.

I don't think a catenary curve can be derived from an ellipse unfortunately.

Sorry if this has been answered before - I did search the forum for 'catenary' and got nothing.

Many thanks in advance.

Hi Joshua, I am also new here. But have you tried "spline thro' points" after calculating the points required for your Cantenary Curve.

Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried a few experiments but it doesn't come out right. I did it with six points and it was still noticeably off unfortunately. Good idea though. I'd never tried that function before.

The more points you have the more accurate it will be. Similar to plotting on graph paper.

Yes, indeed. Just a lot of work to do that even for one instance of a curve, and I want to experiment with lots. I might try blender although I've never used that before and it looks terrifying.

The fun part is in the calculations. Used to design segmented dome for some very large tanks, many years ago. Without the use of a calculator, used a slide rule. Enjoy. Though I am sure you can find something on the internet where you input your particular parameters. and it spits out the answers. :)

Hi Joshua, you might want to take a look at this link. The elephant never forgets, in his hunger for knowledge. Intelligence is gained through knowledge, Education is but a stepping stone towards such knowledge. Good day my friend. http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=catenary+curve