Still failing at networking - if there are any videos or tutorials that concentrate on networking freeform lines on organic shapes - please let me know.

Hi Neil,

re:
> Still failing at networking

Do you mean in a strategic sense, or are you talking about one particular set of curves that you are not able to make a network out of? If it's the latter please post the 3DM file with the curves in it.

re: Tutorials - well, there is the one you found previously here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLaPAeKPuqA

You might try searching for Rhino NetworkSrf tutorials.

- Michael

Am working on a screen cast of me apparently ruining closed crv's. Lol. I start out with shapes that are solid and closed and stand up to the naked script. Then during the process of networking or installing faces the joined shapes must be unjoined or partially so to use the network command. Then when rejoined or attempted - the naked script lights up everything including the originally closed shapes. So - that means there are gaps and spaces correct? If I assign blue to the heel shape and cyan to the profile shape - when I install faces I get a blue wall on one side of the heel and a cyan wall on the other - that can't be right. So I will post doing this so you can see where things go wrong.

The video link posted of the guy doing a neck in Rhino is helpful for a beginner (hello) to a point - especially the heel - in fact I'm pretty good at heels. When he does the headstock he uses more advanced modeling techniques - and as I'm still learning the basics and commands are a tad different in Rhino I'm not exactly sure how he goes about it - although I can see how easy he makes it look (see photos). I'm trying to do the headstock transitions using basic networking first before I move on to the method below.

Conversely, the fillet, trim and blend that I've learned from Barry has been incredibly helpful/useful and am continuing to practice those methods everyday to get proficient. However, want to learn the networking because it lends more control over the shape, length, height of the transition area.

Hi Neil,

> Then during the process of networking or installing faces the joined shapes
> must be unjoined or partially so to use the network command.

Can you please post a 3DM model file that has one of these cases where you have the curves prepared and you're ready to use the Network command?

It's very difficult to tell what you're running into just from a written description. Certainly a screen capture video would help too but really the best is to post the actual geometry that you are talking about. It also helps if the file you post is stripped down as well - instead of all sorts of other objects unrelated to the network if you can post only the curves that you are about to network that makes it a lot easier to figure things out.


> Then when rejoined or attempted - the naked script lights up everything including the
> originally closed shapes. So - that means there are gaps and spaces correct?

Yup.

- Michael

This one is done with basic commands only - seems to be solid but the naked command lights up everything. The faces are pretty nice looking - nevertheless a failure. The lines I start with (see photo) are closed crv's and stand up to the naked script - after networking the entire neck - everything lights up when the script is used. So somehow despite magnifying everything and using the object snap and straight snap I'm getting the faces all wrong. That said I'm getting more and more happy with their basic look and shape. I would post just the part that I'm having the problem with - but that's basically the entire neck. I apologize for being so lame - I really am trying to make sure things are connected - spend hours and hours doing it over and over - but obviously failing at it.

Hi Neil, please post the 3DM model file with the curves you are trying to network - that way I can examine them and give you some information on what might be going on. I can't really do that with just screenshots alone.

- Michael

For some reason it fails every time I try to upload it - I will e-mail it to you.

Hi Neil, I received the file through e-mail in it but when I open the file I didn't see any curves, just a joined surface.

To be able to help you with the Network problem I'm going to need a 3DM file with the curves in it that you had set up to do the Network.

- Michael

Hi Neil, so from the last file you sent I think there are 2 things tripping you up currently:

Number 1 is that you’re probably running the Join command with a whole bunch of curves that touch each in a kind of branching structure selected. Join is only expecting to have a smaller more targeted set of things selected, just enough to make a closed loop or open chain and not something like 3 or 4 curves branching out from a single point. So you’re getting some weird long chains of things from that.

Number 2 is that you’re trying to construct something on one side from one of your original curves and on the other side using Network to a rebuilt piece that was rebuilt using a tolerance of 0.01 . That will make too large of a gap, it’s better to have just one single curve used by both sides and so if you use Rebuild you probably want to delete the original so you have both sides using the same exact thing .

- Michael

And just one more comment on Rebuild - one of the other uses of Rebuild is to simplify a curve's control point structure. That's why the default tolerance is 0.01 units, because a tighter tolerance also needs more control points.

But 0.01 units deviation will be too large if you want to build joinable surfaces using the original the the rebuilt one for surfaces that meet up.

Things need to be no more than 0.005 units apart to be joinable.

So you'd need to use a rebuild with something more like a 0.001 tolerance for this case, or really it's probably better to discard the original curve and only use the rebuilt one for all the next surface construction so all the surfaces come from the same curves.

- Michael

Or it may be possible for you to avoid doing a separate rebuild at all - if you have a curve made up of multiple segments that are tangent to each other, Network will actually automatically rebuild that for you with a tight joinable tolerance already.

- Michael

And for the join thing, what you don't want is to have something like this selected when you do a Join:



Join only tries to join 2 curves together at any one common point, while these areas have 3 curves with a common point:



It's kind of random what you will get, it can easily be something like this:



- Michael

Excellent - this will move me forward for sure. Thanks very much.

Thanks - I did not know that network rebuilds. Really great info.

Practicing basics from the manual and came across this sweep command which kind of reminds me a little of what the kid in the video posted earlier in this thread did - although his looked like it has isocurves - which I still haven't figured out are for . . .lol. Anyway, someone like Barry or Jopo could probably do a heck of a neck transition with the sweep command - I still need more practice - but it's really cool. The 2nd picture is after trimming with a line . . . still practicing jopo and Barry's latest methods but need more practice.

Need help with putting a .125 fillet on the front and back edge of this model. So far it fails when the edges are selected when using the fillet command.

Thanks for help and suggestions. Thanks.

Hi Neil, so the first thing is it looks like you've got some curve objects right in the same spots as the edges. You'll need to hide or delete those so they won't get in the way of selecting edges.

Take a look at the object type indicator after you've made your selection:


If that says "Curve" or "Curves" then that means you have curve objects selected and not edges of the solid, that will say "Edges" if you've got edges selected.

Then there will be other challenges to filleting this as well like the pointy area and several edges are not smooth to each other, spots like here are about 1 to 3 degrees off from being smooth which will often make it difficult to fillet:



But the first step will be to make sure you're getting the selection right.

- Michael

Hi Michael, thank you very much for the help - not sure what you mean by, "smooth to eachother" - do you mean that the shape should have been filleted before sculpting the arm and belly contours?

Thanks to Michael's help was able to fillet this up to .25 on the top and .2 on the back - which is better than hoped - was going for .125 but .25 is even better.

Hi Neil, I mean the ending directions aren't actually tangent there. Just like this example isn't smooth here:



In this example here it's much more obvious that there is a sharp corner. In your cases it's not so obvious because it's only like 3 degrees off from being smooth. That doesn't sound like much but for filleting it can be bad to have shallow corners like that. The reason why is that different fillet pieces will only naturally match each other at smooth spots. At spots that aren't smooth they have to be extended and intersected or have a corner patch made for them. But when it's a shallow angle it tends to make situations like the corner junctures being really small slivery bits which don't behave so well.

Sounds like it isn't a big problem for your case here but the upshot is that it's good for filleting to make your original curve pieces fully tangent to each other in spots like that and not just pretty close to being tangent.

- Michael