I better wait for the big boys to chime in. I already realize that projecting was a waste of time... just boolean from the top down. Not to mention the other 10 ways you could do this, some more efficient than mine.

Unhide everything on that 3dm I posted and you will see the top tracing outline. you could just cut that out of a cylinder too, i suppose.

-Nick

Hi Rudy, both Brian and Nick's methods are good ways to do it.

One other tool which can work well for this kind of "shape from 2 views" type situation is the boolean intersection command, it kind of bundles up the extrusion + trimming into one operation.

Here are some step-by-step instructions:

To start with I drew a curve in the front view, using Draw curve / Freeform / Control points:



Then select that curve and run Transform/Mirror, picking 2 points on the vertical axis to make a mirrored copy of it. Also draw a line at the bottom, and then select all 3 curve pieces and use Edit/Join to join them together into 1 curve that looks like this:



Now switch to the right-side view and draw the other profile, like this:



Here is a different view of these curves so you can see how they are arranged:



Now to create the surface - select one of these curves, then run Construct / Boolean / Isect (which is short for Intersection), then select the other curve and push Done.

That will basically punch out both of these shapes into a straight extrusion, then intersect them with one another.

It will generate this result:



You can now delete the curves. Then select your new surface and run Construct / Offset / Shell, and put in a distance for the thickness. You can do this by either typing in a number for the thickness, or by picking 2 points in the viewport and the distance between those 2 picked points will be used as the thickness. The shelling will thicken the surface into a solid, giving this as the final result:



Please let me know if you have any questions about any of these steps.

> Forum make over is great

Thank you, I'm glad that you like it!

- Michael

Hi Nick - you absolutely had the right idea, just there are some tools that kind of bundle some of these operations up for you.

Behind the scenes they will do the same steps that you did though.

Just a couple of quick comments:

> 3. construct>curve>project to project it on the curve
> 4. boolean cut out the petal

The booleans (and also Edit/Trim) know how to do a projection of a planar curve built into them, so it isn't necessary to do the projection as a separate step here, just do the boolean cut of the petal with your original unprojected curve as the cutting object.


> 5. offset the thickness (dont extrude, it wont be a radial calc on the edges).
> 6. lofted the edges.

If you use Shell for this case (it is the 2nd variety under Offset), it will handle the Loft part for you, it basically does the same thing as Offset + Lofting between edges when it is applied to a surface.

But it is actually a good thing to know how to do these steps manually as well.

- Michael

My steps come from using a MUCH more expensive piece of software than MOI, that doesnt have 1/2 the features. Thanks for the info! ;-)

Hei Guys,
thank you so much.
Nick, Michael, Brian,
I appreciate it very much!

Good night to you all,
Rudy

Pretty much Michael did what I did except he got "posh" with the Boolean Intersection!
Nice to know I am learning though.
Attached is an idea --in principle! note--for doing a TuTu!--- (I DO HAVE FUN!)

Hi Rudy,

I took a slightly different approach, so not sure if this idea/version is any good for you?
This was done really quickly, so it would pay to rebuild it & take some time.

I basically created a curved arc shape & used Rail Revolve around a small circle.
This gave me a trumpet curved shape.
Then I created half of the basic flower shape using Freeform.
I switched on points & adjusted them to get a better looking half petal shape.
Mirrored the half petal & Joined it together.

I then did an Array Circular with the petal shape.
Then selected the trumpet shape & the 5 petal shapes, I used Boolean Merge to finish it off.

All the relevant curves are hidden in the 3DM file.

Hope it's of use, Colin

Rudy, you might like something simple like a 2 rail sweep too. ;-)

Hello Colin,
Great approach!
Actually, this was my intentions...to array the petals in a circular way.

I am amazed the way you did it....I mean, there are many ways to do something in MOI.

Appreciated to the max.

Thank you Colin,
Rudy

Great Nick!

Rudy

Hi Brian,

> Attached is an idea --in principle! note--for doing a TuTu!--- (I DO HAVE FUN!)

Looks good! Also it looks like that kind of thing would work for making a different style of flower that has the kind of broader longer type petals in it.

- Michael

A lot of nice ideas and shapes here!

As you can tell there is usually more than one way to approach stuff.

With Colin's example, the shape comes from a revolved profile, so that has a kind of bending curvature to the surface of the petal rather than it being more of a straight slab.

The boolean intersection method that I showed earlier will produce a straight slab-ish kind of shape since it is the combination of 2 straight extrusions.

Even though your original sketch showed a straight piece, it seems like the revolve method may be a nice fit for your design instead.


The kind of customization that Nick showed is a cool idea as well! It isn't really too hard to get it, sometimes when you have a solid you can kind of erase a piece of it, and then fill it back in with a custom surface generated by sweeping. Here is a step-by-step for getting that just to help others understand:

Starting with that previous solid:



Delete the top face and the little flat piece at the bottom, leaving just the back and side pieces like this:




Next you can draw in a little curve at the bottom:



And mirror it and then join the 2 pieces together:




Now that joined bottom curve can be used as the profile for a sweep along those other edges. Select that double-bump bottom curve, and run Construct / Sweep. Then select the 2 edges as the sweep rails:



That creates a sweep that looks like this:



Now select that sweep and the other back and side surface piece, and use Edit/Join to glue them together into one piece.

Then there is a little hole at the bottom, if this is planar you can fill it in quickly by selecting the object and running Construct / Planar to fill it in. That Construct / Planar command can be used for 2 types of things - it will create a planar surface from outline curves, or it will also fill in planar holes of surfaces to make a closed solid.

If your bottom part is not planar for some reason (this can happen if some pieces were at different angles or something), the easiest way to make it into a solid is to draw a line that divides it from the side view, and then do a Boolean difference using the line as the cutting object, that kind of cut with a line will make a nice planar hole on something.


One thing that is interesting about this method is it shows how you can take a simple solid, and kind of jazz it up by replacing just a piece of it and then re-joining back into a solid again.

- Michael

You can project onto 2 booleand surfaces too !
That gives you yet another form .
In this case from the bumpline of 2 spheres ...
Nothing is impossible in Moi 3d !!!!
Peter

Great Michael,
I really wanted to know how to do that one.
I have learned a lot just from the making of this shape (use of isect and other tools)
Yes, I still use some of them, so shown step for me is truly helpful.

Thank you so much,
I obliged to you all,

Rudy

I've had this one on my 'better figure it out' list for a while... a 'curled' leaf with 'undercut' along a non-radial path. The little grey cells must be firing today, because it only took me a few minutes to figure it out. ;-)