Sure maybe a little more complex for the first post
but remark again right part is the same and the left part will work with your method! :)

here the 2 faces of the internal angle selected
Faces selected are well inversed in edges selected but the Offset can't obtain result wished ;)
Same if I unselect the commun edge after apply script

Hi Pilou, yes offset can not currently take all those curves at the same time.

If you follow the steps here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2088.5
You'll see that I select only one loop at a time instead of everything all at once.

You can select more than one curve to offset, but not when they touch like that, it tries to join those touching sections together into one loop and you've got multiple branches in there instead of one single loop result.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>Does NX handle the situation that PaQ is trying to do in this case of extruding from multiple different planar faces in one step?

No, it does't, same as MoI minus a few clicks. It will extrude multiple planar faces at once but at 45 degrees, then there will be a extra step in trimming the ends.

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So thanks for the 2 little scripts Michael, works perfectly.
I was more less using the same construction method, but with some uneened extra step (like joining lines before the offset).

Hi PaQ - a bit of experimenting with a kind of "multi-planar" outline Extrude concept:



Still some things to clean up on it, but the idea is to make it recognize when a single closed curve is made up of multiple planar "chunks" and treat each of those chunks more like a planar face being shelled.

If I can iron out some of the details that could be one step to speed up this kind of box modeling process. There is some good possibility to add similar multi-planar single-outline processing to Offset and Planar I think.

- Michael

Michael, I just can't wait to have my hand on it !

Looks so simple and natural :)

Christmas for PaQ :)
But it is always Nurbs modeling? ;)

Very nice, Michael ...
It could be very useful for me, too.
eric

The kind of corresponding thing for Planar would be to be able to make a shape like this:



Into a solid by adding 3 planes with just one go of the Planar command.


But I seem to have run into a pretty major snag though, with the problem of multiple possible planar groupings.


Like for example this shape:



You would want this planar grouping I think:



But here is an alternate planar grouping (same curve viewed from a different angle to see the different planes more clearly):




Maybe that one is solvable by using the smallest number of planes... But this one looks pretty hard to decide:




For Cap there would be a way to figure out which of the 2 was needed since the one that overlaps existing planes could be avoided. But for just a standalone curve being processed I'm not sure if there would be a good way to choose...

I'll have to think about it for a bit but I'm not so sure right now if this will really work as I had initially thought....

- Michael

So you must have one more line (or 2 clicks) for kill the incertitude :)

Hi Pilou,

> So you must have one more line (or 2 clicks) for kill the incertitude :)

Yes, it seems so... But adding 2 clicks creates a new problem of making the UI and workflow for Extrude more complex.

If I can find a way to make one of the existing commands more powerful without adding any additional UI complexity, that is something that I try to jump on and make a high priority. I thought I had one of those situations here but maybe not after all...

But yes maybe the full answer is that it needs more lines drawn in there to define all planar regions better. But then that starts to get away from the benefit of having fewer steps as well.


However, as part of this experiment, I also made an improvement to shell which is definitely nice. Previously when shelling a surface like this:



In the resulting solid you would get multiple pieces along the top, one for each original edge:



Now that is tuned up to combine those fragments that are all coplanar into a single plane:



That is something that was already happening with Boolean union, this is now added for the case of shelling a surface into a solid.

- Michael

Yeah, looks great Michael!

Steve

Cool Michael, one thing leads to another, but watch out for that snowball effect :)

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Looks like some LWCAD type stuff is making it in - and I ain't complaining! :-P

-Will

Well, unfortunately I do not really have a good solution to the "multiple possible plane interpretations" problem that I posted previously.

So for now it looks like I won't be able to finish this up and it won't be a part of the next beta.

Let me know if you have any ideas on how to solve the problem!

- Michael

Seems you have in the past "the position" of the click on the edge
Why not use a similar system? Just one click needing ;)
In any case if it's wrong choice, make undo and click the other side :)

Hi Pilou, I don't know.... it can get kind of hard to control things by a clicked on point when there are many pieces.

Also many people don't think about that - remember that is why I switched the blend to not work like that since it was a question that came up fairly often.

- Michael