Thanks Michael -

That looks like a good solution for this kind of Celtic design that loops back on itself.

I hadn't thought of doing an extrusion and fillet. It doesn't create that "X" pattern at the intersections that a circle profile sweep (or the actual ring) has, but this is not a detail that will get enlarged in the final render image.

I'll experiment with this technique and post a render.

Ed

Hi Ed, so it looks like another possibility for tubular type shapes is instead of making a circle as the profile that you sweep, make some kind of semi-circle, something like this:



Then sweep that shape instead of sweeping a full circle profile.

The surface/surface intersector seems to be able to deal with this kind of surface at crossing locations much better than with fully closed surfaces crossing each other. But it still should work just as well as far as cutting a groove into your ring goes.

The technique for creating the shape will be to make sure your rail curve is built in segments that have endpoints at the junctures, then when you do the sweep it will build one surface for each of those segments.

See the bottom object in the attached file for how the result of the sweep should be configured with separate surface pieces instead of one long single surface that crosses itself.

Then you need to select 2 pieces at a time and use the Edit > Trim command to slice them with one another and remove the excess inside crossing pieces. Using Trim mode = Keep can be a bit easier for this since it is kind of easier to select the pieces you want to keep rather than the ones you want to throw away. If you see that a trim did not produce a clean looking cut, you may need to select the 2 surfaces and use Construct > Curve > Isect to generate an intersection curve between them and then trim the surfaces with that curve instead. I had to do that in a couple of spots in this case. Anyway when you're done with that trimming you want to have the result like the middle object.

Then you can make that into a solid by drawing in a couple of lines at the ends and using Construct > Planar to make a plane for that end semi-circle piece, then join all those pieces together, then run Construct > Planar to cap off the top, that's how I made the top piece.

Since it is a fair amount of work to do the trimming, you want to only construct one heart section with this method, and then copy that one finished piece over to make the sequence longer. You'll need to make sure the starting curves have a good horizontal end tangent on them so that the pieces will align well.

At any rate, it looks like it would be more feasible to create a tube result using this kind of semi-circle profile shape rather than a full circle tube.

You also might try building things at a bit larger scale, the pieces are getting pretty small in scale in your original size and it is possible to run into some tolerance problems when you've got pretty small sized details. Building this at about 10 times larger scale than your original one may be a good idea.

- Michael

Hi Ed, here's another screenshot to help explain what you would need to do for building a tube result.

After you build some surfaces with the right segmentation on the rail curve, you'll have pairs of pieces that will look like this:



Then you want to use the Edit > Trim command to slice off that inside area where they poke through each other.

The regular way that you would do this would be to select both surfaces, then run Edit > Trim, then at the cutting objects prompt you just right-click or push "Done" (or hit the Enter key) without picking anything else - that signals to trim that you want to do a "Mutual trim" where each object is both being cut and also acting as a cutter to other objects as well.

Then you would either pick the little pieces that you want to discard, or you can pick the bigger pieces that you want to keep if you set the Mode option to Mode = Keep.

It's still a bit tricky because for some reason the mutual trim in a couple of cases can have a somewhat messy intersection with a bit of a gap between the pieces. You want to be zoomed in a bit so that you can see the intersection fairly well when you are doing the trim and if you run into one that does not look good, then bail out of trim and select both surfaces and run Construct > Curve > Isect which seems to be able to generate a good intersection curve between them. Then use that curve as the cutting object in Trim to cut the surfaces.

Anyway, the thing is that when you've got 2 closed circular tubes that cross each other like this, there is a bug in the surface/surface intersector that tends to miss one of the 4 possible intersection curves. But when you are dealing with open surfaces like this instead of totally closed ones that avoids that bug and that makes it a lot more feasible to make it work.

- Michael

Michael -

Thanks for the additional info on working with crossed tubular designs.

After experimenting with the extrusion & fillet method, I decided it works very well for my needs. Plus it's fast and nothing needs to be tweaked. See render below.

Your comment about increasing my ring model size x10 is well taken. The fillet did not work until I scaled everything up x10. It's easier to work with actual dimensions (even though mentally dividing by 10 is not a deal breaker). Is there a way to apply a scale factor so that I can work in actual dimensions, yet have the model larger so these kinds of issues can be avoided? If not, I guess I can work in feet rather than inches.

Again, Flow works very well and I'm looking forward to using it.

Ed

Hi Ed, that's a nice looking result!

> Is there a way to apply a scale factor so that I can work
> in actual dimensions, yet have the model larger so these
> kinds of issues can be avoided? If not, I guess I can work
> in feet rather than inches.

No there's nothing quite exactly like that - usually the closest thing is to work in a different unit system that will give you larger numeric values instead of small number values.

I am generally trying to make things adapt themselves to smaller sized objects though, by adjusting the tolerance to be a fraction of the object's size instead of having it at a fixed value. Some things are on that system already and some other things still need to be switched over.

The relative tolerance system still needs a bit of adjusting for it to work better on smaller sized objects - I think it needs to be tightened down a little bit more than where it is currently. It's a kind of finicky area to get right - if the tolerance is too tight things will produce too dense of results making for large file sizes and long calculation times. If it's too loose things sag too much and that causes problems.

- Michael

Hi Ed
I am very impressed with what you are trying to achieve , its very sinple but elegant.
Can you tell me how you bend the finished profiles around onto the ring surface
I am new to moi and this could work well with lettering also

thanks
shayne

Shayno -

The hearts design is formed around the ring using the Flow command that is new to the just-released Version 3 Beta of Moi. See:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4438.1

The design was extruded, flowed onto ring, Boolean Diff, and fillet applied to round all edges.

Ed

Thanks Ed
I just figured that out (having just downloaded v3 beta)
So the rectangular box you drew aligns to the ring surface leaving 1/2 of the pattern intersecting into the ring (like the gem array command) Thats a clever feature

I just now need to figure how to import all my settings and shortcuts from moi2 so I don't have to set up from scratch

cheers
shayne

Yes - The rectangle plane (called the Base Surface) is the width of the ring and its length is pi x diameter of the ring.

The extruded hearts design must intersect the Base Surface so that it will intersect the Target Surface (the ring surface) by the same amount.

Apply the Flow command and Boolean Diff the wrapped design leaving the design recessed into the ring. Finally, apply Fillet to the ring.

Ed

Thanks Ed
How do you control the direction the flow goes on
I did a test word that insists on flowing across the ring not around it (no matter where I select the parts)
I'm stumped

ps for Michael
After assigning objects a name you cannot click on their name in the object area to select them

thanks
shayne

Hi shayne,

> How do you control the direction the flow goes on
> I did a test word that insists on flowing across the ring
> not around it (no matter where I select the parts)
> I'm stumped

Right now it always maps from the built-in UV direction of one surface to the UV direction of the other surface.

In your particular case the U and V directions on the revolved piece are reversed from what you need.

To fix this currently you need to alter your base surface - try squishing it to be narrow and tall and then rotate it 90 degrees and then use it as the base surface.

I am working on a way to control how the surfaces relate to one another more easily for the next v3 beta.


> After assigning objects a name you cannot click on their
> name in the object area to select them

There's a new selection indicator area at the right-hand side of the name - click there now to do the selection. See here for an example:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4438.21

- Michael