Hi Martin, it looks like you've used the projection with the "closest point" mode switched on which unfortunately right now tends to not be very reliable and basically needs to be rewritten. It's probably made some kind of weird little zig-zag in the projected M shape.
The single-direction project is much more reliable, but also you don't need to use single-direction projection as a separate additional step before doing a trim since that kind of projection is built into Trim already.
For this particular case of doing "closest point projection onto a sphere" you could probably get it by selecting your "MoI" text and doing an Extrude and activate the "To point" option, then click "unlock direction" and pick the center of the sphere for the extrusion point. Then you can use the solids that are generated from that as the cutting objects in the Trim, see the attached example file where I've set that up.
> So my next query is: How do I go about capping the ends if extruded, or
> creating a surface over them if they are just left as curves?
Yes, capping on extrusion of curves only takes place if you're extruding closed and planar curves, that's when there is a clear and unambiguous end shape that can form a planar capping surface. If you have 3D bent curves then no caps will happen.
Usually the best method for producing the caps in a situation like this is not to extrude curves but to instead extrude trimmed surface fragments, see here for some examples:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3024.4
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4010.4
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3318.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4791.13
You can extrude not just curves but also a surface and when you extrude a surface end caps will always be able to happen since it can just copy the surface to the other end of the shape. You can also use Shell on the surface to thicken it into a solid in a slightly different way from extrusion, see the last link above for a comparison of the 2 methods.
So in this case here, select the surface pieces in the attached example file that were created by doing a Trim, and then extrude or shell those surfaces and you'll then have capped solids at that point.
- Michael
