I too do not have a 3D printer Marco -they are too expensive yet for owning them easily- but it is not so expensive to order the print of small items. My interest, those days, is in the field of jewellery and I do wonder if the lack of so fine 'zebra' flows could produce defects in the case of jewellery item prototypes. Thanks for your answers however. And, really, it would be good to hear other opinions too regarding those matters. : - )

Hi Dimitri,

while i'm not a jewellery designer i would say you can safely forget the Zebra Analysis. The best jewellery designs i have seen are done with ZBrush or 3DCoat for example and those are sculpting programs with no CAD precision and analysis features. So you should not worry to much about Zebra analysis in that case, imho. One thing you could do, for example, is once you have a solid uncheck the visibility of edges in MoI so that you have a flat shaded looking model, to see any imperfections.

Well, hopefully someone proofs me not wrong, in this case.

Regards
Stefan

H Stefan.

@You : "...So you should not worry to much about Zebra analysis in that case, imho..."


I totally agree!

Thanks Stefan, the same seems to me too... but it is always good to ask. : - )

Hi Dimitri

@you: the result is not the desired one, the fill is curved in its shape, while the thing I needed is to have a totally flat fill


A flat fill means to have a ring with two sharp edges touching and ...scratching your finger :)
You want this? I think no...maybe you have planned to fillet the flat fill but Moi's filleter is weak in complex situations like this one.
I did a try using Michael's technique and mine,starting with a minimum radius 0.01....so nothing ;)
Instead i did some blends G2 with a low bulge to have sections little bit filleted but also flat ,extract them using isocurves command.

Second solution that allows you to fillet your fill is to draw a line and adding a point in the middle,so move a little the point to get a little arc





This will be the section(red one) of the sweep,we got the rails trimmed like in earlier pictures





Now i'm able to fillet






Why flat fill don't fillet instead a "bulged" fill do? Maybe because the filleter" have more space to eat" :) let's Michael do and explanation



We have something to check surface quality inside Moi:Dino's lighting !
Here i used onyx light,you can see little artifacts on the fill surface







You can have an alternative to flat snap Michael's showed you(best choice):project your curve on a flat plane








M

Ciao Mauro!

@You : "...You can have an alternative to flat snap Michael's showed you(best choice):project your curve on a flat plane..."

Nice trick!!

Thanks.

Hi Dimitri,

my humble approach, i only used the sweep command with MoI, with paths created from your model
and since i don't know the fillet value you need i included your original without fillets, so that you can
use (in case you like my approach) your own values. I used a 0.25 fillet G2.



Regards
Stefan

Just checked again and i could fillet without problems up to 0.39 which comes then close to the outer round
edges of the outer surface.

Regards
Stefan

Thanks all for the so precious help! : - )

Mauro, thanks for your effort but Michael's way is ok, it gives the proper solution for me.

Stefan, how did you use the sweep in that case? I mean how did you menage to make a fully adaptable, to the circular ends of the object, surface by using only sweep? Can you put a screenshot with the sweep profiles and path please?

And now, I do have two other questions: is there a way to make loop selections in Moi? That's to say selecting an edge, giving a command and so selecting automatically all the continuing edges constituting a loop? And, also, is there a way of selecting the exactly identical in shape entities (be them curves, edges, faces or objects) with a 'select similar' kind command?

I am a user of Wings 3D -it is my standard polygon modeling app- and I know how useful are such selection commands. I needed them in Moi too and I did not find something similar. Are there, somewhere hidden in it, some such commands?

<< is there a way to make loop selections

this one is existing ;)

A very small Script! :)

script:/*Loop selection*/moi.geometryDatabase.selectLoop();

Thanks Pilou, installed it: very very helpful! : - )

Hi Dimitri,

i did the following: I drew a profile (magenta), selected all required edges from your model. Copy/pasted and joined them.
Drew a trimming line (green) to obtain the trimmed rails (blue/red). After that i used the profile and rails with the sweep
settings "exact" and "maintain tangent".

Regards
Stefan

Thanks Stefan, it is ok! : - )

Hi Pilou!

"loop selection".
Learned something again, thank you.

Franz

Just another question: I do see in the Moi Command reference page, in the 'drawing on surfaces' topic, that there is an 'On srf' object snap that lets you snap a point directly on to the surface that is under the mouse. Really, we do see that there is such a command, already activated, when we click on the small arrow (which is on the top of the 'object snap' button in the ui) that opens a snaps list scroll, but how does it work? How do we draw a freeform curve, for example, so that it may be drawn snapped on a surface of a sphere solid? I am trying to do it but in vain. Some help?

Hi Dimitri, the "onsrf" object snap will only be activated if you are picking the point in the 3D viewport. If you're not seeing it then you're probably picking points in one of the Top/Front/Right ortho viewports instead of the 3D viewport. When you pick points in the ortho viewports onsrf is disabled because the ortho viewports are focused on making 2D planar drawings and onsrf has a tendency to fill the entire screen with snap points at different z levels.

Some more information here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7692.12

- Michael

Thanks Michael, I do see that it works perfectly on flat surfaces having objects (on a cube for example). It works in the case of curved surfaces also but sometimes resulting, here and there, in some leaps. When you try to draw on the surface of a sphere solid, for example, the drawing lines-curves go beneath the surface in some areas. But anyway, it is ok. Thanks again for the quick answering! : - )

Another question too: in the video below, in its 8.16 m. point, there shows that there is a ‘lighting presets’ scroll under the ‘lighting options’ of the ‘view’ section of the ‘options’ tab. I am not finding it in the v.3 I have. Is it somewhere else or it is taken out in this version?

https://vimeo.com/55672426

Surelly this one...by Dino
http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5222.47

but maybe integrated with the Custom UI by Max Smirnov!
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6507.241

Thanks Pilou! : - )

Hi Dimitri,

> It works in the case of curved surfaces also but sometimes resulting, here and there, in
> some leaps. When you try to draw on the surface of a sphere solid, for example, the
> drawing lines-curves go beneath the surface in some areas.

Yes, just your "picked points" that are specified in the drawing command will be on the surface - having an entire curve through its entire length result on a surface is a different thing than having just some individual points of a curve on a surface. Except for planar surfaces.

In the future I want to add some kind of drawing mode option for making a "curve on surface" for this kind of thing.

- Michael