Hello,

I'm building an adapter from scratch and want to imprint the red pattern .5mm into the solid. Is there a quick way to do this? I try to extrude that curve and I am unable to get the ends capped (of course I could be going about this the wrong way) Thanks.

Hi OSTexo,

Just quickly looking at this, these are the steps that I would take, someone else might have a different approach.

1. Draw your curves on a flat plane above your adapter.


2.Offset these surfaces at your required amount, in this case 0.5mm, use Flip check if offsetting in the wrong direction.


3.Extrude the green curves past the offset surface, the extrusion should be a solid (capped).


4. Boolean diff the solid ribs with the offset surface and delete the bottom parts from the result, you should have something like this.


5. Boolean diff these from your main body and you're done, if you like you can fillet the edges before the Boolean operation.


Cheers

Hi OSTexo - you're not getting caps on the extrusion because your curves there are not planar - MoI only knows how to automatically cap something if it is closed and planar.

Usually you would probably want to have extruded the original planar curves (instead of projecting them on to the curved surface) to make a cutting object. But if you want something that goes in by a certain distance hugging the contour of the surface instead of a straight distance in only one direction, then you would probably want to build an offset surface like Danny mentions.

I think you may also have the same curve replicated several times here? Some of them are not actually hugging the surface 100% because there is a bit of a bend to the surface there. So that's making an alternate method of using Trim + extrude the face difficult in this situation.

Do you have the original curve before you projected it? If you could post that I can show you another possible way to do this.

- Michael

Hi OSTexo, here is a quick demo of a different way. Note that this produces a depth that goes straight in one direction.

But one easy way to get a "custom capped extrude" is to extrude a face that you have trimmed out of a piece rather than a curve.

You draw the curve first, which is planar, off to the side like this:



Select the surface and run Trim, pick the curve as the cutting objects and then Right-click or push done at the "Select pieces to discard" prompt to keep all the pieces.

So that leaves you with a separate cutout piece, like this:



Now you can select that face and run Extrude. Note that in your case you will have to do this twice because you are crossing between 2 faces and not just one, and you can only extrude a single face right now and not a set of them.

Once you extrude the face, it will be a solid, like this:



Now you'll want to select the front face of that solid and delete it, and it will now be a pocket that is ready to be joined to the main piece:




Trim can be unreliable when you are using it with a curve that is not planar and is also not quite exactly aligned with the piece that is being trimmed, so it does not work well to trim your particular case with the bent curves you posted, that's why I was asking if you had the original planar curve still around. It's better to trim with that one.

- Michael

Hello DannyT and MG,

Thank you very much for the info. The file I posted was for procedure only, I am working from a distorted TIFF and an actual unit that I can measure (thankfully), since the product in question is sourced in Europe but not the US and the STEP files aren't available (just another opportunity to polish the MoI skills, I still have a long way to go). I'll be away a few days, but will try this out and post the final results. It's the last piece needed for the complete quick start guide.

Quick Update:

Tried it before running out the door. Worked perfectly, thanks again.

Hi Michael,

>Hi OSTexo - you're not getting caps on the extrusion
>because your curves there are not planar - MoI only
>knows how to automatically cap something if it is
>closed and planar.

Have come across this one a bit doing my ship. Have found that uncapped ends cap nicely using network. Would it be possible to have a check box for extrude which tries network automatically for non-planar extrudes?

Also, extrusions which are made up from more than one surface create internal extruded surfaces (in fact "stacked" surfaces for shared edges). Would it be possible for extrude to recognise joined surfaces as one surface when doing extrude (ideal) or to automatically delete internal extrusions?

Do you have any plans for extrude?

Hi Mark,

> Have found that uncapped ends cap nicely using network.

You probably had a particular arrangement of curves for that, like a 4-sided boundary?


> Would it be possible to have a check box for extrude which
> tries network automatically for non-planar extrudes?

Unfortunately that would not work in the general cases, it would only work if you had a 3 or 4-sided boundary. For example if you had an outline made up of 5 curve segments it would not be able to be handled automatically by Network.


> Also, extrusions which are made up from more than one
> surface create internal extruded surfaces (in fact "stacked"
> surfaces for shared edges). Would it be possible for extrude
> to recognise joined surfaces as one surface when doing
> extrude (ideal) or to automatically delete internal extrusions?

Yeah, I think this makes sense - I have put it on my list of things to try for v3.

For now you can run Boolean Union on the result with the shared internal wall, it should fuse those pieces together and remove that part.


> Do you have any plans for extrude?

Yup, I have a few different ideas - I'd like to make it easier for an extrusion to be automatically booleaned with an existing solid, like when you are extruding curves that are on an existing object, and also I'd like to have a tapered option for extrude.

- Michael

Hi Mark,

> You probably had a particular arrangement of curves for
> that, like a 4-sided boundary?

Yes, the particular extrude was four sided.

> Unfortunately that would not work in the general cases,
> it would only work if you had a 3 or 4-sided boundary.

Yes, understood.

> For now you can run Boolean Union on the result with the
> shared internal wall, it should fuse those pieces together
> and remove that part.

Jeez I'm an idiot...

I manually searched and destroyed all the internal walls I had created. If there is a hard way to do something, I'll find it!