You can also save it as PNG + transparency for a more easy vision on the Moi screen :)
(Not exactly at the same scale here)
Better if you have the 3 views of course:)
And you can put any number of images in the same time at any positions!

Hi Graham - Jesse gave you some great tips above. Here are a few other ideas on some construction techniques you might find useful.

Here I started with a drawing with one closed outer loop and a few open curves that divide it into sections:




One thing I thought you might find interesting would be to give some more of a kind of textured curvature along the top surface of the piece, rather than just having it flat. It's not really too difficult to get this.

To do that, I switched to the front view and drew this curve above the others:



Then I switched to the right-side view and drew another similar one:



To construct a surface, I selected one curve, then ran Construct / Sweep, and then selected the other curve as the rail. This generated this curved surface:



This will become the top surface of your model. You can vary the shapes of the curves to produce different curvatures and different shaped surfaces.


Now the next step is to select just the closed outer curve from the bottom and extrude it to punch it up into a solid. You want to bring it up far enough so that it punches through the curved top piece. That looks like this:



Now select the extrusion that you just did, and then run Construct / Boolean / Difference, and then select the curvy piece as the object to subtract. This will cut your extrusion into 2 pieces. Select and delete the upper piece, which leaves you with this:



Now you can select that piece, run Construct / Boolean / Difference, and then select the open curves that divided the bottom closed curve. This will slice the solid into different smaller solids:



So I guess you would cut each one of these with a different wood to get a different color and pattern.

One other thing you may find interesting is to Fillet these pieces which will round off their edges:



I hope that might give you some additional ideas! Let me know if you have questions about any of these steps.

- Michael

Here's a variation on that last piece. Here I did an offset operation on each of the open curves, then used those offset curves with Boolean Difference to slice the solid up into smaller pieces. This leaves some channel-type areas that have a constant width to them.

Then I took that same previous curved top surface and moved it down a bit and then sliced just the channel pieces with it and discarded the top part:



- Michael

WOW you guys, thats awsome, Thanks so much, I realy like this piece of software, I can even draw my patterns in it, also looks like i can seperate each piece and cut it out on the machine as well as shapeing , You know how much time your saving me:). I have silo as well but i know I cant do all this in sillo. Im not knocking silo, its a cool program but im having a tuff time figuring it out, Ill be one of the first in line to purchase MOI when its ready.So i will do a easy one first like a dolphine and show you guys and you can show me what im doing wrong,This is great guys thanks again. Graham

HI GRAHAM IVE BEEN ON VCARVE DOING CNC CUTTING AND FOUND THIS SOFTWARE AND MICHAEL ,FRENCHI PALOO AND ALL THE OTHERS HAVE DONE A EXCELLENT JOB HELPING ME THIS IS VERY HELPFUL AND EASY AS I AM A HOBBIST

Hi CLEENRMN , I have cut3d so with moi and mach3 im all set, Moi is a great piece of software, Seems easy to use. What im wondering about is, What kind of detail could i do, like say if i want too carve hair into an animal or feathers and such, how can this be done. Well im still working on my first file so once its done ill show every one. Thanks Graham

Hi Graham,

> What im wondering about is, What kind of detail could i do, like say if i
> want too carve hair into an animal or feathers and such, how can this be done.

MoI probably isn't going to be a good tool to do that type of fine bumpy type details.

You'll probably get better results for that type of stuff with a program that is designed specifically for relief type work, I think ArtCAM is more specialized in that type of area, so you might want to check that program out.

Earlier you also mentioned Silo - That would be another good choice for small organic type details like this. Its toolset is more designed for sculpting and handling small little lumps and bumpy details.

As you've seen, MoI has a different approach - MoI is more oriented towards creating larger sort of more broader curved pieces sort in a drawing or sketching type style. Its toolset allows for really quick creation of these types of objects, but isn't really as well suited for teeny tiny bumpy details like you might find on a model of a human head for example.

Different programs tend to have strengths in different areas.

- Michael

Hi Graham,


Michael is right about ArtCAM being better for organic reliefs. In the image of the girl on the coin,
ArtCAM did a "relief from bitmap" which I had to clean up and sculpt to match the drawing.


But, for really simple 2.5d designs that don't require much of an organic look,
if you just wanted to mill some grooves that would suggest the look of hair
or feathers, some CAM programs have an option to do a
"centerline engraving" or V-carving on a 3d surface, using a vector line.

As you can see, I brought the same image into MoI and traced over some lines.
I probably could have done a better job if I had done my feather this way..:-)

In the CAM program, you would enter in the depth of the cut . The width of the tool
determines how wide the cut is, so you could do a few tool changes to vary the width.

You can draw the feathers or hair with MoI's freeform sketch curve, keeping the lines
spaced adequately, being mindful of the width of the tool and the overall proportions
of your design. MoI exports an IGES file that can be converted to a DXF in another program.
I'm not sure which one would be best. I think CorelDraw does it, but from what
I can remember, it breaks up the lines pretty badly.


Jesse

Hi Jesse - Do you know if there are any other CAM programs out there that also handle relief work like this, or is ArtCAM pretty much the main one for that?

- Michael

HI Michael, RDK, Thanks for the reply, Artcam hmmmmm maybe if i morgage the house and sell the kids lol. I know mastercad/cam has a puffing tool that will work in detail like that but its even more expensive than art cam. I guess right now its not that important. But what if i drew some lines to repersent hair and extruded as a minus and just use a vbit to carve them, I havent done any files as yet to try plus im still finishing my cnc machine. I have a whole seller who is waiting to see some files before I start on any finished product so i better get some done hey. Thanks again. Graham

Hey every one, well this is cool, I can open a file from MOI into silo, So now i can do the big stuff in moi and do the small detail in silo, I like moi for my main modeler as its way easier and faster.Things are getting better. Oh i saved a file from moi as a obj so if anybody needs to know there ya go. Graham

Hi Michael,

ArtCAM seems to be the most popular one in the US.
I've never used any other relief modelers but I'm aware of
Cimagrafi , Stenza and Type3 There are probably several
others..

I don't think of it in the same category, but there's RhinoArt, a plugin to
Rhino and also Matrix, (a jewelry design program with Rhino as it's engine),
which has an "Art" module. The thing I've encountered with surface modelers
and making textured surfaces, is that the meshes rapidly grow in
size as detail increases.

A friend of mine sent me a intricately textured model to mill that he had
created with C4D and Rhino.. it was a nice model, but it was too big for me to do
anything with it in Rhino. (He bought himself a PC with a dual processor and 4
MB of memory to handle those big files).

The same model that was 124 MB as an STL, slimmed down to less
than 5 MB when I imported and converted it to a relief in ArtCAM.
What's up with that? I guess some file formats are more efficient for highly detailed surfaces.

-Jesse

Hello Graham,
Does Silo allow you to import back the re-touched file to MOI?

Thanks,
Rudy

Hi everybody,hey rudy,sorry i didnt get back to you about sending a file back to moi from silo, at the moment i cant seem to do that but im sure there is a way.
jdk, I did check out artcam. awsome software, im getting a demo but wont be able to afford it for a while.
Hi Michael, Ive been trying to do a project here but having troubles, Every time i go and do a boolean my sweep disapears, I have an attachment to show what happens. Maybe you or some one can show me what im doing wrong. Thanks, Graham

Hi Graham, it's not clear to me which parts you're trying to boolean together.

Are you trying to cut the upright wavy "Q" walls with a curve?

If you're trying to divide it in half by a line, you may need to move the line up in Z away from the middle of the shape. That's because a straight line right in the middle of the shape kind of has 2 directions that it can possibly cut the shape in. If you move it a little distance away from the shape, it will clear up which direction the cut should go.

But I'm not sure if that is what you are trying to do there.

- Michael

HI michael, What im trying to do is the sweep extrude then boolean but when ita done the sweep part disapears, Im doing the q first then the rest as i go piece by piece by piece. I hope thats the right way to do it. Thanks for your help. Graham

Hi Graham, ok now I understand.

Your problem here is your extrude is not a solid, it only has the side walls on it. You need it to be a fully enclosed solid with caps closing off the bottom and top.

Normally you would get caps put on automatically (unless you turn it off by unchecking the button for it), but that can only happen if the curves you are extruding form a fully closed loop.

In this case you've got a slight opening on both the outside and inside outlines at these spots:





See how the ends don't line up with each other on the zoomed-in view? You need to fix up those ends so that they touch each other, either by trimming or by using Edit/Show pts and moving the end points around. There are 2 spots like this to fix up.

Once you do that, you will be able to select both the inside and outside curves, and then do an extrude, and it will generate a solid that has sealed caps on the top and bottom - that's what you want.

In this case you can also skip the sweep step, because your sweep in this case is made up of 2 lines which will make a plane - the extrude with a fully closed outline will already make a plane at the top. You only really need to do the sweep step if you want a more textured or curved piece on the top instead of a flat plane.

Let me know if you have any problems with making this next step work!

- Michael

Thank you so much Michael. Sorry im such a pain in the butt. I got the Q to extrude but I can not get the center to clear . Sorry again for being a pain but once I figure this all out im sure ill go crazy with creating designs and such. Thank you Graham

Hi Graham, don't worry you're not being a pain, you're just learning how to use the software! Helping people with problem areas tends to help me understand what things need to be improved in future versions to make things easier.

In this case you've still got a mis-matched endpoint problem on the inside loop. Check out the image from my previous message again - there are actually 2 areas that needed to be tuned up, the second area is also circled in red sort of in the lower right-hand area.

Your new model has fixed the first problem in the outer loop, but not the equivalent second problem in the inner loop. Once you fix the endpoints of the inner loop to align, then you can extrude everything and get the clear inside like you want. Let me know if you still have problems with this and I will give you some clearer steps.

By the way, your illustration in the center looks nice and clear, it will be cool to see this finished!

- Michael

Hi every one, I was wondering if some one could look at my try at sweep,extrude, boolean. I took a close look at every thing and there dosnt seem to be a problem yet it wont work. What ive been doing is opening moi , did my 2d drawing then took it apart and would do piece by piece in a nother mooi window, dont know if thats how every one eles does it. If you know a better way please tell me thanks. attachment q3.3dm is where im at, slowly but surely ill get there.graham