I would like to flow some 1mm high text onto a curved surface so I can subtract it and create recessed text for an inlay.

I've drawn a base line under the text and a base line on top of the surface but I think something is either confusing MoI or confusing me as the flow doesn't work - it seems to put it under the surface.

How do I get this to work? Thanks. Andy

Hi Andy, curve to curve flow doesn't know anything about the surfaces. If you go from a straight line path mapping to another straight line path that's not going to produce any curvature in the result.

You could put in a plane underneath your text and use surface to surface flow or you could use curve to curve flow if you project a line onto your surface like this so that it has the curvature of the extrusion's shape instead of going in the straight line direction of the extruded top surface shape:





- Michael

Hi,

To do what you need, the easiest way is to flow from surface to surface.
But you could do it from curve to curve, but for this case (curve/curve) you have to do it with the path of the curve, not with the bottom of the text.

In the file I put orange surfaces for surface flowing and Blue curves for Curves flowing.

A small warning, if you want avoid a modification on height of the text you have to modify length of curves.



Case Top_2.3dm

I got it to work - many thanks. Now I am struggling with the boolean to subtract the text from the body.

Choose boolean
Choose the body
Hide the body
Choose the text

and I am usually left with one letter or part of a letter and I cannot unhide the body.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaodW2oX3PQ

Andy

Solved it by extruding the text 2mm, putting the base line 1mm from the top, flowing so the 2mm text is 1mm inside the body and 1mm outside of the body, and then boolean.

Andy

Hi Andy, it sounds like you've got your boolean worked out. So yes it tends to be good to have the cutting objects push all the way through the other object's surface by a little bit instead of having pieces that just barely skim over each other with nearly coincident surface areas.

The skimming type case can make calculating the intersections a lot more difficult.

- Michael