I needed to confirm that I could add volume.
Brian

Hi Wagurto,

> Maybe I am just being dumb here but is there anyway
> to just draw a extruded rectangle cut it in the middle and
> bend it some degrees?

Nope - there is no function like that in MoI. In MoI if you want to make a bent shape you usually draw it with the bend built into your drawing. There are a variety of different approaches that will work, you can see a lot of different ideas covered in the thread here.

That recording that I put up earlier was a real-time recording, so that takes about 1 minute of time to draw something like that.

You do have to use a combination of tools to do that, but you should generally expect that when you want to make a shape that has elements of it that bend around in 3D, that it will take some combination of tools to make that happen.

If there was a different special tool for each kind of possible custom shape that you wanted to make, the UI would be completely overflowing with special tools...

I do actually want to add a Bend tool in the future, but there are some technical difficulties with having that kind of tool work on the kind of geometry that MoI uses. So it will probably take a while before that happens.

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are trying to do - is there a particular reason why you need a tool to do this faster than 1 minute of drawing time? Are you making a whole bunch of these or something like that?


> Like we will doing with a actual metal strap?

You may want to check out a sheet metal focused application rather than MoI, it would possibly be set up for doing those kinds of specialized things more easily.

- Michael

Michael.

I have tried ot your very elegant method. Just sweet.

Have you a similar elegant way to add thickness?

(My effort is very messy)

Brian

Hi folks, I've come up with this solution, hope it helps.
Cheers
Dan

Hi Brian,

> Have you a similar elegant way to add thickness?

Yeah I just used Shell for that same as it looks like you are doing there.

That generates a result with constant thickness but yeah the joint part is maybe not quite right.

One way you can get more control over that is to build 2 sheets for the top and bottom parts, and then Loft do fill in the side walls. That gives you more complete control over the shaping.

- Michael

Michael thank for the reply and I am not complaing about your solution. The thing is that I am trying to model a logo that contains several of those twist and bends and have to have some precise measurements and doing it your way for a newbe sounds a lot of work. My suggestion is maybe from a complete ignorant point of view. This is what i am trying to accomplish.
Thank you again.

Hi Wagurto, your suggestion is a good one, but unfortunately there are technical difficulties that make it difficult to create the computer code for a bend-type modification tool on the kinds of objects that MoI works on.

So that's why you have to construct the bent object out of individual pieces similar along the lines of what is shown above.

Do any of the above techniques give you a way to build your object? Or are you still stuck?

You basically need to build it piece by piece, using one of these techniques. I mean build a straight part, build a bent connector part, boolean or join pieces together, and it looks like you want to then put fillets on it at the end to round the corners.

You can probably build one segment and duplicate it.


There just isn't any method available in MoI to start with one long strip and bend it around to get that result, sorry! It has to be built in pieces.

- Michael

Michael
Sorry to be dragging this on. Following your method-----

I can not get the original to Shell?

I am quite proud of the outer layer I produced as you suggested but I can neither get an effective loft between the two or an edge sweep?

Brian

Hi Brian,

> I can not get the original to Shell?

Looks like there are some micro-sized folds in your surface:







That kind of situation where a surface folds back over on top of itself in a small area really throws a monkey wrench into shelling or offsetting, because the surface normal very suddenly shifts to the opposite side in those spots.

It looks like your original curves have that kind of folded over spot in them.


> but I can neither get an effective loft between the two or an edge sweep?

That folded over area is probably also giving a problem for sweeping - for lofting are you possibly trying to Loft the 2 large curves together all in one operation?

One of those curves is made up of 3 segments, and the other is made up of 8 segments - MoI doesn't really know how to best match up differing numbers of segments like this and will just average the entire shapes together, which probably does not result in what you want.

To get better results with lofting that case, you'll need to break things into their segments by using Edit/Separate, then loft it in smaller pieces (like in this case in 4 different Lofts) so that you can force the segment matching to be what you want.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Michael---you can probably see the dark mushroom cloud over my place from where you are!

LOVE the rotate gizmos etc in the other thread!

Brian

I got some cool results by sweeping a helix then squishing it down.

Its somewhat different shape than what you show, but if you were allowed the creative, then its fast and looks great. Maybe for future creations. Works less for the W V A thing but more for a similar effect quikly!

Burr, that one really has the most natural kind of look to it!

Yeah slightly different than the official target design since the sections are not straight, but it also seems like that same thing gives it a much more natural wrapping look to it as well...

- Michael

Whoa!

I did not know that blend works on curves, I surely learned something today!
That's the problem, Moi makes me feel like I don't "need" to read the manual!

Marc

Perhaps this will help it's just a sweep of a rectangle along two lines blended with tangential option

Rafaello, nice approach. I did try your model but notice that only works with those angles I tried to rotate the non vertical leg and make it parallel to the other leg but it won't sweep. Any idea way?

Hi, you have to break the rail curve and erase the curve between th lines, then move the lines to the new position and blend them like I show you in the image, finally join the lines with the curve and make the sweep.

Hi all, this is my attempt for what it's worth.

Hi Wagurto,

what about this, borrowed Dan's 3dm-file and rotaded/copy/pasted the parts




ooops, I meant to say: "This is from right to left"...

/Lars

Hi, Dan I saw the file you sent and that's exactly what I was lookink for. I try to replicate what you did but I am stuck at the lost+sweep step. Could you be so king to eleborate a little more? I am really new to MOI and step by step command will help me a lot.
thanks
Wil

Hi Wil,
here you are. Sorry for the bad quality, but I had to keep it light!
Hope it helps
Cheers
Dan