Manipulate a Path using Actionscript?

I need to create (for an engineer) a steel I-Beam that is fixed to a wall at one end, but “bends” when a load is placed at the far end. Imagine a flagpole sticking out from the side of a building. I f you pulled down on the end of it, it would bend and/or eventually snap off at the junction of the flagpole and the wall.

Initially, I created with the Pen Tool a simple, 4-point rectangle, keyframes at frame 40, identical to the start keyframe, and keyframe at frame 20. At frame 20, I selected ONLY the two rightmost points on the path and increased their ._y about 20px, but THEN… adjusted the curve handles to make it look like a bent rectangle. I told frame 1 to ShapeTween to frame 20, and frame 20 to shape tween to frame 40. Worked great!

However, they liked it sooooo much… :hangover:
That they asked me if it is possible to have a slider going across the bottom that allows them to adjust the tensile strength of the beam from soft to hard (100 iterations), and a slider going up the wall that allows them to adjust the spring tension of the junction to the wall (100 iterations). Ultimately they would set the two sliders and Click a ShowMe button to see the beam deform, according to calculations. Sigh…

While I can understand this might be possible, I know better than to not present this challenge here for consideration.:huh:

Here is the simple animation so far. Might not even want to download this one, fyi.

I am thinking I could try to do a lineTo actionScript to draw the rectangle, but how do I adjust the degree of that curve using actionscript?

So, in effect, what I am after is a slider that sends a 0 to 100 value to the beam and onRelease, a function moves the far right points down a variable number of pixels and the curve is not a straight line from the wall to the end of the beam. A “bending” beam.

Arrgg. How can I control this with actionscript (ideally ONLY actionscript)?

Grateful for any brainstorming.

P.S. Is this where senocular’s Path.class comes in? I’d be happy to try that!
Helps?