Full Version: Flow on Multiple Surfaces?

Hi all!

I'm working on this blaster grip and have run into a little snag with the knurled portion.




Here's what I did:

First, I made a rough draft of the shape.





Close enough, right? So I figure the best way to add a knurled surface to the green area is to use Flow. But there's more than one face on the outer surface of this shape. Too many seam lines.





Fine. I'll just Join some curves together, use Rebuild to remove seams, Project a couple of curves in the center to make a grid, and then Network the whole thing together.





And that works great, except there's still a seam line.





What am I missing? Shouldn't Rebuild have removed the seam? A poster on another thread mentioned a script called Seamless, but I can'r find a reference to it anywhere else. Is there a way to use Flow on multiple surfaces? Maybe a script I could use? How can I think differently about this?

Image Attachments:
1.jpg  2.PNG  3.PNG  4.PNG  5.PNG 

---

I believe that the seamless is here but it's just visualy!
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7912.4

Normally a seam from Moi don't trouble a render!

---

Hey that worked!





I'm not planning on a render, so it's ok. This is strictly for 3D build. I just want Flow to work over the entire surface.

Thanks Frenchy!

Image Attachments:
6.PNG 

---

Hi propmaster, it sounds like you're all set up ok now thanks to Pilou?

re:
> What am I missing? Shouldn't Rebuild have removed the seam?

Rebuild in its "Refit" mode will only glue together segments that are tangent to each other. If there is a tangent break in your curve it will rebuild each of the smooth parts separately.

In "# Points" mode there is a "Keep corners" option which you can disable to have it ignore sharp corners.

So probably there is a little bit of a tangent break in your curves in the area where you're getting the unwanted edge. If you can post the .3dm model file with your curves in it I could take a look to confirm that.

- Michael

---

Hi Michael!

I can't upload the file. I get the following:

Server Error

500 - Internal server error.
There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.


Patrick

---

Hi Patrick, sorry about that, there might have been something going wrong temporarily with the web server. Can you please try again?

How large is the file though, is it big?

- Michael

---

No, it's only 13.6MB.

Still not uploading. I'll keep trying. I have more questions now. :)

Patrick

---

Hi Patrick, well that's very large from the standpoint of what the forum software is expecting to handle.

Can you please export a file with only the curves you were asking about above? That should be around 1/100 the size.

- Michael

---

Ok, got it.

A is the original solid. B is the finished one. I used Rebuild on the curved lines and Sweep to create the surface.

I had intended to use Flow and add knurling to the Filleted surface (see pic in OP), but I need a flattened version of that surface in order to use Flow. I'm not sure how to go about doing this.

Any help would be appreciated.

Patrick

Attachments:
Grip 2.3dm

---

I think you are "overmodeling" this.

Just use a nice knurl texture and bump map when rendering it instead.

---

It's not for rendering. It's for 3D printing on Shapeways.

---

Hi Patrick, I'm not able to repeat the additional edge you got with Network. It could help for me to see what went wrong for you if I could get a file with only the curves in it that you used to make the Network.

Here's what I did with your posted file:

Selected these edges and used Edit > Join to glue them together into 2 independent curves:



Selected these edges and used Edit > Join again to make a single joined curve:



Selected this one edge and used Copy/paste (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) to duplicate it as a regular curve.



Selected these 2 curves and used Edit > Extend to make them come to a sharp point:



Selected these 2 curves and used Edit > Extend to make them also come to a sharp point:



Then these 4 curves can be selected:



And running Construct > Network gave me this:



It's not really necessary to do a separate Rebuild before doing Network (unless you need to use one of the other rebuild modes than "Refit" mode) , because Network itself already incorporates a rebuild in it anyway.


Now for doing the knurling it's pretty difficult to model knurling directly and I'd think you may need to make it further extended or else the knurling is going to follow these lines of the surface which will make them in curved lines:




Those are isocurves that I extracted from the surface.

You may need to build something that's extended more like this to avoid distortion:



Knurling like you show there is such a small sized feature I'm not sure you can get a good 3D print of it with the stepping resolution in a normal 3D printer.

Texture mapping may still be a better way to go, if you use a displacement texture map in a rendering program you can probably have it output triangulated mesh geometry which can then go to STL format. 3D-Coat and ZBrush may be good at applying this kind of displacement bumping too.

- Michael

Image Attachments:
patrick_network1.jpg  patrick_network2.jpg  patrick_network3.jpg  patrick_network4.jpg  patrick_network5.jpg  patrick_network6.jpg  patrick_network7.jpg  patrick_network8.jpg  patrick_network9.jpg 

---

Hi Patrick, there's a tutorial here about using displacement texture mapping for 3D printing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zms6K9LxMQ

- Michael

---

And some other tutorials on texture mapping for 3D printing:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2841201

https://grabcad.com/tutorials/how-to-create-incredibly-complex-textured-shapes-for-3d-printing-using-bump-mapping

- Michael

---

Bingo!

---

Thank you for helping. You've given me an idea on how to proceed in a different way. Gonna think on it for a bit.

---