I don't believe you can without make some reparations :)
so after : explode all
and make some Sweep (and other reparations because your file is a true mess! ;)
(Curves at jonctions are not on the good vertices so no joint possible, no symmetry etc...)
i was following michaels instructions on the "I" but likely did it too fast; will try again.
I could easily fix that missing 'joint' but only some surfaces would close if i clicked planar.
For your case here to start with the curves need to be cleaned up so the pieces meet up exactly end to end and are precisely mirrored. You only need to bottom ones though, join those together into a single curve like this:
Then draw in an angled line here:
Select the line and run Construct > Sweep and pick the bottom closed curve as the rail path, that will generate these surfaces:
These are the surfaces you need but they need to be trimmed up. You can use the Edit > Trim command for that cutting them one by one but there is a shortcut you can use if your initial construction curves are clean and precise. The shortcut is that the boolean merge command can be used to extract out a center volume from a piece like this and slice away all the outer pieces in one shot. To use that you would need to put in a ground plane like this:
Now select all the surfaces and run Construct > Boolean > Merge and it can extract out the inner core solid:
3DM model file is attached.
> Also as this post is quite old any faster / alternative ways to acheive similar results ??
Using boolean merge will be quite a bit faster than trimming each individual surface. But make sure your starting curves are cleanly constructed, ends exactly touching and opposite pieces mirrored.
Already tried following your initial instructions which is how I seemed to get 'close'.
It seems all I need is a closed curve of the font outline and a 45degree line, no trimming
required if bolean merge used and artwork perfect...
Could you please verify if this dxf; the origination of the "I" is ok to start with...
Hi Stefano, yes that DXF file works fine with the CorelDraw DXF import fix. It would not be a bad idea to replace the straight parts with simple 2 point lines. You can construct a solid without doing that but it might help with other operations further down the line.
Here is a screencap of the process just after opening that V_Carve_I.dxf file you posted:
Hi Stefano, additional notes - the curved sides of the letter in your DXF file are not exact mirror images of each other but it seems to work ok still. But the center line where the pieces intersect will have a little undulation to it instead of being straight because of that variation.
Also if you want to draw a 45 degree angle line, type <45 and push enter to enable angle constraint.
Nice one Burrman! I need to take a look at viacad.
Was also considering a potential 'type and go'
route from aspire or v-carve. They call it 'prism text' for seperate shapes.
Export as stl?
Another tracks with Blend curves so you can take any Bulge you want...so less or more elegant result! :)
Sweep or NetWork for the long Part
Sweep or NetWork for the Foot
Planar for the triangle
PS I don't know if the Gray Thema by Cody is less or more readable than the original UI ?
Hi Stefano,
Took a quick look at the Vectric stuff (aspire) and it looks like they offer the toolpath option too. So it's not "type out text" like that. It's a toolpath called "v-caving"....
The other thing these CAM packages like Vectric Aspire or BobCad have is "embossing".
So in BobCad, they have "BobArt" and i can emboss geometry using arcs and lines and angles, which produces this too....
But the result of these will be poly's, not NURBS.
Was just thinking the approach of Michael's is great on single letters or a few letters
...but what about if there is a whole paragraph of text where many of the letters could be
quite small?
Points noted about STL* and I've discounted that route...
so now wondering, could a bitmap>3d route work nice e.g.
max's heightmap?
Greyscale bitmaps of some "I" files attached. This was sent to me from one of the technical
guys at Cadlink Engravelab/Signlab software. They don't do stl but do can do
bitmaps of toolpaths easy and fast...
As I don't have heightmap installed and had issues knowing where to install it, hoping someone can try...
V_Carve_I.3dm
