Suction hole

[JuhaHo]

I'm looking for the best practice for flying particle suction. I think in pFlow, there was a script for suction hole. I'm trying to take particles from air and send the through a pipe.

[d4rk3lf]

Inverse spherical wind plus path follow?

Maybe of you can share a screen, it would be easier to help.

[JuhaHo]

Thanks,

Here's the screenshot of the system. I didn't include the internal parts of that horizontal drum, because they are irrelevant. I have used some planar wind forces here.

[JuhaHo]

So far the Path Follow operator has been best solution. It took some iteration rounds to set up the timing when the path starts to attract the particle stream.

On thing, I might want to improve is, that the stream is a bit narrow around path. How to make a bit more offset variation?

Then another. I keep getting bluescreens due to running out of memory when exporting the system as tycache. Any ideas for reducing memory usage?

[d4rk3lf]

On thing, I might want to improve is, that the stream is a bit narrow around path. How to make a bit more offset variation?

Try adding spread operator bellow Path Follow. 

Then another. I keep getting bluescreens due to running out of memory when exporting the system as tycache. Any ideas for reducing memory usage?

Maybe export 2 Tycaches? 
Make particle count twice lower, cache it, change a seed, cache it again. 

Not sure if it will work for your scene, but sometimes you can cache something like 1/10% of the particles. 
Import cache into a new Tyflow with Birth Flow, and Flow Update operators. 
Then bellow it, add a spawn operator (spawn once (by default), but 10-15 particles). 
And finally, spread operator to spread them out randomly.

[JuhaHo]

Returning to this project.

So, wonder what would be the best method for sending particles into pipe and let them follow it. So first I need "suction hole" effect to attract the particles into the pipe and then have them following it. I have started with Path Follow operator, but I'm not quite there yet as I don't understand all the parameters by intuition.

[JuhaHo]

I mean, how can I distribute the particles more evenly to the pipe cross-section area.

[GreenDK]

Maybe a geosphere and force object.
Then use same geosphere as surface test, so when particles test true for volume inside they get sent to path follow event?

[JuhaHo]

Here's another try. I see some improvement here. I think the attraction is too powerful. Is it the falloff parameter, I should start doing iterations.