Drawing a 3D arc and helix in SceneKit

Question

A recent question here made me think of SceneKit again, and I remembered a problem I never solved.

My app displays antenna designs using SK. Most antennas use metal r

Answer 1

Here are some starting points that might help.

One approach would be to use more cylinders and make them shorter. That's the same idea behind the various segmentCount properties on the SCNGeometry primitives. Can we see a screenshot of the current linked cylinders version?

If you increase the heightSegmentCount, you could use the approach outlined here: scenekit, how to bend an object.

I just took a look at SCNShape. I was thinking you could use a shader modifier to warp the extruded shape into a circular cross section. But SCNShape doesn't seem to expose a segment count property, which I think you'd need to create enough extrusion segments for a good look. The chamferRadius and chamferProfile properties look interesting. I wonder if you could use those to create an extrusion that looks good.