I have a path consisting of a series of straight lines and arcs, and now I would like to modify that path by replacing some segments of the line/the arc with another small arc whose centre is on the original paths (see picture below).
Ideally I would like to only specify the original path and the locations (in per cent) of the original path where the detours should be added (and whether they should go to the left or to the right). The radius of all the small detour arcs is the same.
Is something like that possible (e.g. with decorations)?
I know how to do it manually, but that gets fairly tedious once you have a few of those detours, and you have to readjust a lot of things if you change the size of things.
UPDATE
As an example of what I had in mind, here's a curve with corresponding TikZ code as generated by a simple Haskell program. In the program I simply have to lists that specify at which y positions the vertical lines get wiggles and at which angles the arc gets wiggles. The rest involves only a little fiddling with the arc sine function.
This was more what I had in mind: To create a path using some macros (essentially just a "for each" loop).
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}[scale=6]
\draw[color=red,line width=0.4mm] (0.5,0.8660)arc (60.0000:72.1349:1) arc (-16.4325:166.4325:0.0500) arc (77.8651:87.1349:1) arc (-1.4325:181.4325:0.0500) arc (92.8651:102.1349:1) arc (373.5675:196.4325:0.0500) arc (107.8651:120.0000:1) -- (-0.5000, 1.0660) arc (270:90:0.0500) -- (-0.5000, 1.3160) arc (270:90:0.0500) -- (-0.5000, 1.5660) arc (270:90:0.0500) -- (-0.5000, 1.8660) -- (0.5,1.8660) -- (0.5000, 1.6660) arc (90:270:0.0500) -- (0.5000, 1.4160) arc (90:270:0.0500) -- (0.5000, 1.1660) arc (90:270:0.0500) -- cycle;
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}
And the program that generated it:
import Text.Printf
foo' :: Double -> Double -> Double -> [Double] -> Double -> String
foo' r x l [] u = printf "-- (%.4f, %.4f) " x u
foo' r x l (y : ys) u = printf "-- (%.4f, %.4f) arc (270:90:%.4f) " x (y - r) r ++ foo' r x (y + r) ys u
foo'' :: Double -> Double -> Double -> [Double] -> Double -> String
foo'' r x l [] u = printf "-- cycle;"
foo'' r x l (y : ys) u = printf "-- (%.4f, %.4f) arc (90:270:%.4f) " x (y + r) r ++ foo'' r x (y - r) ys u
bar' :: Double -> Double -> [(Bool, Double)] -> Double -> String
bar' r l [] u = printf "arc (%.4f:%.4f:1) " l u
bar' r l ((left, y) : ys) u = printf "arc (%.4f:%.4f:1) arc (%.4f:%.4f:%.4f) " l (y - alpha) (y - s * beta + delta) (y + s * beta) r ++ bar' r (y + alpha) ys u
where alpha = 2 * asin (r/2) * 180 / pi
beta = asin (r / 2) * 180 / pi + 90
s = signum (u - l)
delta = if left /= (l > u) then 0 else 360 * s
ys = map ((+) (sqrt 3 / 2)) [0.25, 0.5, 0.75]
phis = [(True, 75), (True, 90), (False, 105)]
narf r h ys phis = "\\draw[contour1] " ++
printf "(0.5,%.4f)" (sqrt 3 / 2 :: Double) ++
bar' r 60 phis 120 ++
foo' r (-0.5) (sqrt 3 / 2) ys (h + sqrt 3 / 2) ++
printf " -- (0.5,%.4f) " (h + sqrt 3 / 2) ++
foo'' r 0.5 (h + sqrt 3 / 2) (reverse ys) (sqrt 3 / 2)
main =
do putStrLn $ narf 0.05 1 ys phis
spath3can do this easily. How are you specifying the points where you want the arcs spliced in? With a curved path, are you concerned about pinpoint accuracy with the size of the spliced arcs, or is a little variation acceptable?spath3might be what I was looking for. What I'd ideally like to do is something like\draw (0,0) -- (5, 0)and then some modifier that says something like ‘insert a wiggle of radius 0.2 after 30% of the path’, and similarly if I have\draw (0,0) arc (60:120:1).