just a guess here. try the mirror before the sweep.

Hi jf - it tends to be difficult for Shell to thicken open surfaces made up of pieces that meet in a sharp manner.

Try capping your initial heart outline to be a solid (select it then run Construct/Planar), then select the top face and then run shell.

Without a solid, shelling can tend to get confused about trying to trim the extended offset pieces with each other to make a clean corner. When it is a solid there is a neighboring surface that is used to intersect with to make a good corner.


If you can post your .3dm model file, that would help me give some other advice.

- Michael

Not quite the same problem, but why can I fillet the other edge and not this one?

Hi Brian, over here the top edges fillet fine up to a radius of 0.9 or so:



Any much more than that and there isn't room for the fillet to fit - you can see above that at radius 0.9 the side wall surface is trimmed down to a small thin piece.

From your bottom fillet it looks like you were trying a fillet radius of 1?

Since your entire object is only 2 units tall, that would cause the side parts to be completely eaten away - that will cause the fillets to fail. You have to use a smaller radius on shapes like that.

- Michael

Thanks Michael. Did you use my file?
I have reduced the bottom fillet to .2 (it was .9 originally not 1) and I still can not get any fillet on the top one?\
Sorry for the trouble but it is very odd as far as I am concerned.

A completely different file with the same problem?

Hi Brian, yup I used the file you posted and it worked fine over here.

Also your second file works fine over here as well.

I think the problem you are running into is that you are selecting the original curve objects that you used to extrude, instead of selecting the edges of the solid.

Since those curve objects are in the exact same location as the edges of the solid, it is easy for them to get selected when you click in that area.

So before you do your fillet, select those curves (and in your new file you actually have an extra planar surface object down there as well) and hide or delete them so that when you click to select the pieces to fillet you will be targeting pieces of your solid and not those original curve pieces.

Another way to make this clearer - click and drag on the solid to move it a little bit off to the side, and you will then see these other objects that are getting in your way.

- Michael

Michael, OK I got things to work with that end comment.

BUT--who, of normal thinking, would know that VERY ODD proceedure needs to be adopted? (Have I missed something in the "Important Instructions"?)

Sorry, but the whole exercise with fillet seems to have ----gnash of teeth---"difficulties"!

Brian

Knowing that before may have saved me many hours of frustration previously on a lot (most?) of my attempts to do things---or, am I the only dummy?

Hi Brian,

> BUT--who, of normal thinking, would know that VERY ODD
> proceedure needs to be adopted? (Have I missed
> something in the "Important Instructions"?)

I think in the tutorials I mention hiding or deleting your original curves so that they don't get in the way later on.

Some other people have definitely gotten confused by this same thing. But it isn't a very easy problem for me to solve.

I mean that curve is there because that's where you drew it to begin with... It didn't pop into existence automatically or anything like that.

The only way I can think of to solve this problem would be to try and remove that curve automatically when you perform the extrusion.

However, that is also prone to weird surprises, like if you want to move your object off to the side and edit the curve you drew to make a new extrusion, it wouldn't be there. And in this case it would be some automatic process kicking in and changing the model from what you drew... So that does not seem like a great option to me either.

- Michael

Another option is that you can select a face for filleting instead of edges.

That can be quicker for things like you are showing since it is just one thing to select instead of many. It will fillet all the edges that belong to that face.

- Michael

But sellecting the face gives a fillet on all edges!

The problem is that the solution is "odd" to say the least--but, if my memory retains the message, I may not have the problems again?

The thing is, how does the message get ingrained into newcomers thinking/working practices?

Sorry for carrying on, but there are just a very few "odd" working methods in the current version of MoI that either need an SR or very clear working proceedure instructions.

Having coming from a learning of say Carrara and Hexagon (Amapi) maybe the 3D thinking of the likes of me may be different than those who come from a Rhino say background?

Hey!--but MoI is still the best thing sice sliced bread!

Hi Brian,

I guess a lot of it comes down to how you've learned to do your "workflow"?

Very early on I'd gotten into the habit of hiding my original curves straight after the Surface had been formed.
I tend not to delete them just in case I need to rebuild or use them to modify the model a bit later on.

This of course means that when any Fillets need doing, the only thing I'm able to select is the Surface.

Hope this helps, Colin

Hi Brian,

> But sellecting the face gives a fillet on all edges!

Well, only if you select all the faces...

Like if you want to fillet edges just along the top of a shape like this:



Then you can select the top face like this:



Which will produce fillets just along the top edges like this:




Note that there is not a fillet on all edges, just on edges that belong to that top face.

The nice thing is I only had to select one face to fillet all those edges, instead of selecting many edges.


> Sorry for carrying on, but there are just a very few "odd" working
> methods in the current version of MoI that either need an SR

It certainly helps when you describe the problems you are running into, that may give me ideas on how to improve things in the future.

But not everything has a very clear cut solution to it, a change to solve one particular problem may cause new problems in other areas. In this case everything is functioning as it is designed to, so a SR is not the answer.


> or very clear working proceedure instructions.

That's really what the forum is for - it seems like this is all cleared up now with this forum discussion?

But yeah for v2 at least I can add some notes about this in the documentation for Fillet.

If you were running into a lot previously and wasting a lot of time, I guess I'm kind of confused why you didn't post about it earlier?

- Michael

Colin.
You grasped a concept that my simple brain missed--can I blame it on age?

Michael.
Michael, as your images show, selecting a plane gives fillets on all edges--which was not as I wanted!

Why not complain/comment before?---when do I know the fault is not mine?

I am reminded of the wow tutes by Thomas about Hexagon, which as far as I can see no-one has yet emulated. (Most "crash"!) As Thomas said, he had a team designing the programme to his ideas!

We all dont have the same thought train or app backgrounds, so some will , naturaly, be slow like me.

However, I make a point (?) that some of the basic MoI concepts may be "un-natural" to some and may need highlighting if they can not be changed in V2.

How do you highlight those "different" things in the, very first, introduction to the app? Now theres a puzzle!
(Hidden in a tute is not sufficient maybe?)

> Why not complain/comment before?---when do I know the
> fault is not mine?

Well, it certainly is true that it is generally helpful for you trying to work things out for yourself before bringing it up.

But at the same time if you keep running into it or it is taking a significant amount of time, please do bring it up.

It's important for me to know what things people find confusing.

And for instance in this case it didn't take long to clear it up...


> However, I make a point (?) that some of the basic MoI
> concepts may be "un-natural" to some and may need highlighting
> if they can not be changed in V2.

I certainly agree with your point!

I don't generally expect for 1.0 to be perfectly natural in all operations to all people from all different backgrounds. That's pretty much impossible...

But I can make improvements as time goes on though!


> How do you highlight those "different" things in the, very first,
> introduction to the app? Now theres a puzzle!

Yes, that is the difficult thing to figure out. The other major complicating factor is that the things that are different change depending on your particular background.


> (Hidden in a tute is not sufficient maybe?)

I think that tutorials are probably the most straightforward solution though - for example if I had a tutorial that did some extrusions and filleting that might have been able to cover this a bit more since extrusions tend to have the curves overlapping the generated objects more so than the commands I happened to use in the other tutorials.

In the future I would like to do some more tutorials and I can try to cover this with them.

- Michael

Thanks Michael.