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node explode
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Explode (node)Take a shape apart into the inputs of whatever made it.
Category: Construct | Add menu: Construct > Explode
- Geometry (any): the shape, or group of shapes, to take apart.
- Kind (pulldown, default Auto): Auto, Point, Segment, Line, Ray, Arc, Circle, Ellipse, Elliptical Arc, Shape. Which shape to read the input as.
On Auto, the sockets are not fixed. They follow whatever is wired in, because exploding is the inverse of constructing and different shapes are built from different things.
Pinned to a kind, the sockets stop depending on the data. They are there whether anything is wired in or not, and whatever arrives is read as that kind.
A cluster is edited with its inputs empty. So a node whose sockets only appear once data arrives has nothing to wire to while you are building, which made Explode almost unusable inside a cluster. Pinning the Kind is the fix: the sockets exist from the start, so you can wire them before any geometry is flowing.
Pinned to Point, every shape is read through one rule: give me its position. A segment hands back its start, a circle its center. That is exactly the rule the deprecated Separate XY used, which is why it is the replacement for it.
Constructing runs one way: points and numbers go in, a shape comes out. Explode runs it backward and hands you what the shape was built from, so you can build something new on the same foundations without redrawing them.
On Auto, because the sockets change, the node looks different for every kind of thing you feed it. The sections below show each one. In all of them the header stays the same neutral grey, because it is always the same node.
The two ends, as points.
The two points the line runs through. A line has no ends, so they are not called Start and End.
Where it starts, and a point it passes through. The far end runs on forever, so there is nothing there to hand back.
Center, start and end as points, and the radius as a number. The radius comes out separately because it is a measurement, not a place.
Center and radius.
The three points that define it: center, major axis, minor axis. Not the hundreds of points it is drawn with, which would be useless to build on.
The same three, plus where the arc starts and ends.
Corners as points, edges as curves. Two views of the same shape, so you can build on whichever suits.
One socket per kind present, named in the plural, each holding a group of just that kind. The example shows segments, arcs and points; you get whichever kinds are actually there, in the order those kinds first appear in the group. So the sockets follow the group's own order rather than a fixed one, and rearranging what is inside the group rearranges them.
Explode peels one layer at a time rather than flattening. Wire one of these sockets into another Explode to go a layer deeper.
Geometry that came from a node is taken apart by that node's own record, so the sockets become the maker's inputs. The example is geometry from a Rectangular Grid, which gives back its counts and spacings. Those are things the shape alone could never tell you.
A point has no parts to take apart, but it does have a position, so that is what Explode hands back: X and Y, as two numbers.
This is the same question Separate XY was built to answer, and asking it through Explode means one node answers it alongside every other shape. Separate XY is deprecated for that reason. It still loads, so documents built with it keep working, but use Explode for anything new.
Empty geometry is the other end of the scale: nothing to report, so it passes through as Geometry rather than failing.
Explode Segment, Line, Ray, Arc, Circle and Rectangle / Polygon are deprecated. They are gone from the menus, but they still load, so documents built with them keep working. Use Explode for anything new: it answers for every shape, including ellipses and elliptical arcs, which none of the six ever did.
One thing the deprecation note used to blur: Explode Rectangle / Polygon handed back a shape's edges, and Explode does not, because those are different questions. Explode answers what a shape was built from, which for a square is the two corners it was drawn from. If you want its sides, take them from the Edges output on the node that made the shape: Square, the two Rectangles, Region: Points and both Regular Polygon nodes all hand back their region, their edges and their corners together.
Segment | Line | Ray | Arc | Circle | Rectangle / Polygon
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