please help

 From:  Michael Gibson
1175.3 In reply to 1175.1 
Hi billis - this one looks pretty similar in shape to the one that Jesse did in this tutorial:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=510.5

If you open up the file that Jesse attached there, you will see several different stages that went into making that ring.

It will take some different steps to create this ring than the previous one that you posted - you can't just combine 2 straight profiles to make this one since that will create a kind of block type shape and you want a smoothly curved shape here.

Just like in Jesse's steps, you will not want to model the finger hole directly at first - at first just concentrate on making the outer shape as one whole piece and then drill the finger hole in later.

I believe Jesse used Sweep to create his outer shape - that gives you a lot of control over the shape since you can put in a number of profile curves to control it.

In your case, Rail revolve might be a good option for constructing the outer shape, see here: http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/moi_command_reference7.htm#railrevolve for some examples of Rail revolve.

Rail revolve pivots a shape around an axis similar to regular revolve, but you can also supply a path curve that squishes the shape. I think in your case supplying an ellipse as the path curve might work pretty well.

To start with I drew these 2 curves in the Front view:




Then I switched to the top view and drew this ellipse:



I then dragged the ellipse upwards so it was near the of the shape. It's actually ok if you leave the ellipse down below though. So at this point I have these curves as seen from the 3D view:



I then selected the profile curve (shown in yellow above), then ran Construct / Revolve / Rail revolve (rail revolve is the second option to the right that comes up under Revolve). Then select the ellipse as the rail curve, and pick the axis in the front view, first point at the bottom end of the profile, and second point vertically up from it. That will create this shape:



Now select that shape, and then run Construct / Boolean / Difference, then select the circle as the cutting object. That will drill a hole through your shape and leave you with this:



It might be a good idea to then select the edges around the finger hole and apply a small fillet to them.

You can edit the profile curve to control the general shape of the ring, including how much it flares out at the top.

Model is attached here as rail_revolve_ring.zip

Hope this helps!

- Michael