Hi Billabong,

It sounds like most of the problems are related to using MoI as a surface modeller rather than a solid modeller. In other words, trying to make a bunch of individual surfaces and stitch them together rather than making simple solids and using those as components or cutters.

Surface modelling is tricky, but Kuechmeister Swagger is really good at it and so makes it look easy. Like how professional athletes make scoring goals look easy.

For organic shapes that require surfacing there are some more tutorials here:

http://www.k4icy.com/tutorials.html

However, maybe starting over and sticking with solids for a while would help. Looking at your model it seems like much of it could be made by adding and subtracting simple solids and then filleting to blend them together.

- Peer

@pressure,
Your absolutely right, its just that surface modeling is what really interested me about Nurbs modeling to begin with. Solid modeling can be done in most 3d programs now with Booleans, so theres not much difference there, but regardless of that, I totally understand what you mean.
I have actually tried to go on k4icy.com tutorials, but when you click on any of the links to view it. None of the images show up anymore. All the links to the images are broken. So without them the tutorials are pretty much useless for me.

Hi Billabong,

Luckily MoI can do both surfaces and solids in the same environment and has operations that blend the two like using a surface as a boolean cutter for a solid.

Several of the problems that have come up sound like they stem from using Network when it's not the best tool for the job. Like when Michael said above that "That looks like it wants to be an extrusion that is trimmed but instead it's something that's surfaced directly between 2 long curves..." or also the nearly-planar surface that he pointed out.

So, instead of surfacing everything you could use solid operations for most things, and only surface when it's required. For the model you've been posting most if it could be done with solid operations from primitive solids like cylinder, sphere, revolve, or extrusion. For airplanes and cars there's lots of surfacing. But even when doing surfacing life can still be made easier by putting together solid "components" from the surfaces and then booleaning those together.

I understand you're already doing that, but the simpler each component is, the easier it will be to troubleshoot rather than looking for a needle in a haystack when trying to put a bunch of surfaces together at the same time.

For micro edges there's a plugin tool for finding them:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=11271.13

The problem with surfacing is really that NURBS is a system capable of extreme accuracy. That sounds good, but it also means that it's intolerant of the slightest inaccuracy.

If you make solids that push through each other a little bit (overlap in 3D space) and then boolean them the overlap gives some slack to the boolean algorithms when figuring out how to combine the shapes.

Even when surfacing, it's best to use large surfaces that intersect so that the intersection can be used as the trim / edge. That get's rid of the accuracy problem by guaranteeing that the 2 surfaces meet along a common curve.

But, if you are going to build things up from surface patches you will need to work to the same in-human level of accuracy that NURBS entails. Like in your video, you move around some curve endpoints to get them to match up. That doesn't mean that the curves match up with the rest of the 3D object. And those tiny imperfections that are small on a human scale are actually large on a NURBS scale, so the software has no choice but to decide that the surface patches are too far apart to join.

- Peer

Hi Billabong,

Re:
> I have actually tried to go on k4icy.com tutorials, but when you click
> on any of the links to view it. None of the images show up anymore. All
> the links to the images are broken. So without them the tutorials are
> pretty much useless for me.

There is something weird about photos loading on those forum posts. I tried viewing:

http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6706.1

And the first time I saw generic icons for each of the photos, but after refreshing a few times the images loaded.

So maybe try refreshing the pages a few times to see if that gets the photos to load.

- Peer

for me it's appearing absolutely normally...first download since 2014! ;)
as it's a long page...and if you have not a speed connection maybe this explains that...

Mayo takes over the relay of Cad Assistant!
https://github.com/fougue/mayo

Hi Billabong,

re:
> I've watched almost all of Kuechmeister Swagger videos and he makes using networks
> and lofts look relatively straight forward, but its proving out that, that's not the case at all.

Those techniques are for an advanced (and rather finicky) type of organic shape modeling for things like car bodies that don't have any straight line or planes in them at all. That area of NURBS modeling has a high learning curve and really it can be easier to do these types of forms in a poly modeling program using subd smoothing instead. NURBS modeling has it's greatest strength and lowest learning curve when doing mechanical shapes largely defined by 2D profile curves and using booleans.

For mechanical shapes you don't want to use those methods, for mechanical shapes you want a line to be a line and a planar area to be a plane surface instead of glommed together pieces with rebuild and Network on everything.

You'd probably be better off if you didn't see those particular tutorials until some time later on.

- Michael

Hi Billabong, here is a version with the hole you were trying to patch filled in.

I put in a plane through that area and reconstructed the vertical surfaces around the hole to extend past the plane and get trimmed by the plane:



- Michael

Free Onshape online can open a Moi 3DM format !
https://cad.onshape.com
You can of course use it as a converter! ;)

For import a file press "+" left Bottom page!

OnShape is a monster! :)