Hello everyone,

I just want to share the last project I'm working on.
It will be my biggest MoI project, I'm not sure how I will manage it :P

So the idea is to build some kind of steam powered elephant, to illustrate one of the Jules Verne novel. (La maison à vapeur)

So here a real model, I was my first inspiration image, however I have something more mechanical in mind, with a more steampunk design.





I'm still making some design research, but I allready start to model some part I know I will use soon or later






and finally here's a first version of the front foot.



I'll probably fillet all the objects at the end, because my computer is not very happy already because of the polygon count.

Voila, hope you'll like it, and if you have any suggestion I'm listening :)

Cheers

Pascal.

Woah! Looking good so far Pascal, huge project, good luck.
Looking forward to see how you're going tackle the outer shell.

Cheers

Hi Paq,

Nice project, i admire designers like you
bringing something new.

One critical note:

The gears are not convincing because the space
between the theeth is to big and they're not aligned.
So virtually it wont work

I show you a picture off a rc-modelcar i am designing

My compliments so far

Paolo,
Could you please describe your process for ensuring the gears mesh?
Thanks,
Burr

yop that's right Paolo, I was using the circle provided by the Spur Gear Profile script to cut the gear teeth, but it was a bad idea :)

That's for the comment !

Hi BurrMan,

From http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/ you can
download the SpurGearProfile script wich you
have to save in the 'commands' folder and
then assign a key in options/Shortcut keys

Here below i attached two gears with Modulus 0,4
24 teeth and 108 teeth

Sorry BurrMan,

Maybe you intended how i did manage to
position the gears.

Wel in Rhino40 i use the arrow keys to move
the objects 0.1 mm (i personalised them to my needs)

So i used i kind of empirical way leaving plus/minus
0.1 mm of space in this case
(when i align gears on a 'real' rc-modelcar this is the way
i do it)

In Moi3d in most cases i use Circles/Lines as snapping
objects

Thanks Paolo,
Yes I do have the gear script. Since his didnt work I was wondering if you did it different. No and Yes.

Thanks for the explanation :)

I've been meaning to ask petr if the nudge tool can be edited to give "SuperSmall" or if I can change a value that will acheive this. (Possibly even an htm that can pop up that will allow setting this param) Even incorporate it in MoI with an option setting.

I dont ask for much :O lol

Burr

Hi BurrMan,

I do not now much about javascript but
i did take a look at the gear script and
found these variables:

var PD = N / DP; // Pitch Diameter
var BD = PD * Math.cos( PA ); // Base Circle Diameter
var A = 1.0 / DP; // Addendum
var D = 1.157 / DP; // Dedendum
var OD = PD + 2 * A; // Outside Diameter
var RD = PD - 2 * D; // Root Diameter

Maybe if you play with the values and save it under
a different name you can see what happens

Good gear data here, simple to understand.

http://www.hpcgears.com/technical.htm

Cheers

Thank you DannyT,

This information is most
valuable

Voila, here's a correction of the gear.
I have tried a little render test and I definitively have to change my workflow. Every edges are filleted, and I just can't move around my object anymore because it's way to heavy.
Takes 10 minutes to meshing the object for a 500.000 polys .obj output. (on a xeon quad 3.2)



IT would be really cool to find a smart way to handle more complex model like this. I suppose layers is a solution ... but even with layers it seems that all in all nurbs require more computer power than I though.

It's more easy to handle this amount of details with subdivision polygon method. You just handle the cage object, and subdivide it only for the rendering.

Here I have reduced the details in the MoI viewport, using something like 80° for the mesh angle, and remove the 'add details to inflection' of course. But it's still unworkable ... it takes age to do a mirror or a simple move.

Maybe a solution will be to able to store the fillets in an history stack, so you can choose to hide/show them when needed ...

Hi all,

Add: SpurGearProfile script

That script should draw correct outline :) except there is quite small number of sample points per involute (the profile of the tooth).

That circle "provided by the gear spur profile script" is a 'pitch diameter circle' and was supposed to help you assembly a meshing gear.


Add: empirical way leaving plus/minus 0.1 mm of space

Yep, it's something what is called the backslash...

See this two animation; the first one shows meshing gear with an operating center distance correction and second one without it.

http://www.mech.uwa.edu.au/DANotes/gears/meshing/meshing.html#animation
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Involute_wheel.gif


Petr

ps: I am not expert on meshing gear, just had a quick look at my aged excercise books when I was writing that script :)

Here in theory

Wow! So graceful...

>>Every edges are filleted

It would need something like Rhino's faked filleted edges on meshes for rendering so you didn't need to make a real fillets...

Petr

And that is only one of
the foots (hi hi hi)

Now you need 32 processors

Hi Burr,

What do you mean by "super small"?
Currently, the default step for nudging is 1.0 unit. And there are two modifiers - small and large, e.g.

Nudge Left Small      this divides default value by 10 (then step is 0.1 unit).
Nudge Left Large      this multiplies default value by 10 (then step is 10 units).

You can change a default step to nudge by changing the 'dist' variable on the line 18 in your favorite Nudge.js file.





Yes, it is possible to modify the script to allow user to define the default step directly in the shortcut. To give it a try, download attached file NudgeStep.zip, unzip it to the \command directory and set up a shortcut, for example:

Nudge Right 0.5

You can still use the modifiers like

Nudge Up Large 0.5

Although, I don't know why you do this when you can just write

Nudge Up 5.0

Note that it is necessary to keep a fixed numerical format (it doesn't matter if you use '.' or ',' as a decimal places separator though). So this will work:
5.0
3.333333333
001.0
2.50

and this won't
.5
5
1.


Petr

Wow Petr, this plugin looks really sweet and will definitively save me a lot of time. It seems to work with fryrender, amazing.

Thanks a lot !

Damn this is an amazing plugin,
This is exactly the kind of small fillet I wan't everywhere, and it takes mostly no time to process !



Definitively in my MoI wish list ...

Hi Pascal, there is curve piping plug-in for Rhino as well. So you can draw a centerline curves only... -Petr

Thanks Petr!

Burr