How do I extend the cylinder to follow this curve shaped object?
I tried placing multiple cylinder but it just doesn’t work well.
I tried placing multiple cylinder but it just doesn’t work well.
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Honestly if I were you I’d just model it in blender or cinema 4d.
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You would probably have to model it as, as far as I’m aware there is no gap fill plugin for cylinders
I suggest using Archimedes Two. Very useful and easy-to-use plugin that has helped me make curves many times.
edit: Didn’t mean to make this a reply lol
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the only method I could think of is either an unnecessarily complicated union, overlapping the cylinders then using a cylindrical hole in a rectangle to cut off the excess, or you could make the cylinders out of parts instead (by rotating a rectangle around it’s centre point and using resize align) and then through clever use of resize align, gapfill and the method from this timestamp: https://youtu.be/OioWDTA0CRA?t=1310
This is unnecessarily complicated and probably poorly explained, so as other comments have suggested I’d just try get into blender or cinema 4D.
The plain “just model it” answers are inappropriate and unhelpful for a build-related question such as this since they don’t answer the question. Often times, they’re given when actual building solutions exist. I really wish they weren’t so prevalent on this forum.
The only matter I’ll be concerned with in my answer is whether or not it answers your question, and that it’s possible within the confines of Roblox Studio itself. Normally I don’t worry about performance as long as something is able to be learned, or taken and improved upon from my response, but luckily my answer for your problem won’t add on too many extra parts than what you already have.
A brief note on supershamrock23’s solution:
Archimedes Two would still result in sloppy connections between sharp angles between the cylinders, which on first thought I don’t think can be cleaned up with CSG. And if generated from your original cylinder, (as one would with Archimedes) then the length of the generated cylinder would not match that of the part beneath it.
As you can see in this screenshot, the very first generated cylinder (middle segment) does not line up with the part beneath it (green line is cylinder endlength, cyan line is part endlength. The distance between them would increase with each additional render), rendering every other generated cylinder after that also an incorrect distance. You could fix this by resizing the cylinder to be the correct length after each rendered segment, but that wouldn’t fix the sloppy connections between the cylinders themselves.
Onto my solution:
This is an extension and improvement on your current method of using cylinders. It should consist of far less parts than building out the curavature of a cylinder manually and gapfilling/resizing between them as Foxzes suggested, but that is also doable in many cases, especially those where gapfill is necessary since gapfill doesn’t work with cylinders.
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Start off with your base section, like so: (Always create the cylinder from the part it’s meant to connect to, rather than placing it manually. This way the connection is seamless without much fiddling around)
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Duplicate the cylinder (duplicate, not copy/paste) and convert it to a ball in the properties menu.
The size of the ball should always be something like (3,3,3) or (2.5,2.5,2.5). Whatever the width of your cylinder is, is normally what will line up. Move your ball a few studs over until it lines up perfectly, If the length of your cylinder is a clean number, then the distance you move the sphere to the left or right should also be a clean increment. (eg 1, 1.5, .25)
You should end up with something like this: 
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Duplicate your original part and cylinder segment, and move it over so that they are perfectly connected, like so:
The ball is out of view, but it should still be located in the center between your two cylinders. -
Using your building tool of choice (f3x or SBS, I recommend SBS) Select your second part&cylinder segment as well as the ball/sphere inside. Next you’ll need to rotate the selection using the ball as your pivot point. I’ll explain this process using SBS:
Select the RotatePivot tool.
Mousewheel click the sphere that is out of view. This will set your sphere as the pivot point, and the rotation axis will change position to reflect that. -
With that done, you should now be able to rotate any degree you want with near-seamless connections. The smaller the scale of your build, the less noticable the seams will be.
This sphere is only required when your cylinders are sloping downward, as they are in your example screenshot. When the parts curve up, the cylinders are easy to work with since the visible portions of it don’t need to be lined up to each other. In that case, recreate your cylinder using the blocky parts beneath that they are meant to line up to, rather than pasting one of your previous cylinders and trying to position and angle it manually.
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Perfect response, as you said as well Archimedes 2 is great for everything else besides duplicating cylinders (no fault of the plug-in itself, however.)
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