I am spending far too much time trying to add continuous piping to the perimeter of a cushion with rounded corners. The piping follows the edge through the x, y and z axes. What is the most efficient workflow?

Leonard

Hi Leonard, so if I understand you correctly you have a bunch of curves and you want to create tubular objects that follow those curves as the path?

Probably the fastest way to do that right now is to install the Pipe plugin from here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#Pipe

That automates doing a sweep of a circle around a batch selected set of path curves.

The forum post about it is here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1463.9

- Michael

Hi Michael,

There are two issues: a faster workflow and having the rail follow and stick to the form's (cushion) edge.

You can see the rail separates from or overlaps the cushion edge. Adjusting the points in 3D and is about 75% successful and very time consuming. This can result in gaps or the piping cutting into the cushion which will not be seen except in a close up.

Moi3D makes this amazingly simple except for this one part which sounds like I am, again, missing a setting.

Thanks,

Leonard

Hi Leonard, well for the most part the kind of piping that things are currently optimized for are when the rail curve is going down the center of the pipe.

That's what that Pipe plug-in will make quick to do in batches.

But it looks like in this case you are trying to make a kind of pipe where the actual tube is offset some distance away from the path curve rather than running down the center of the path curve. So you won't be able to use that Pipe plugin for your case here unless you prepare the rail curves differently.


> You can see the rail separates from or overlaps the cushion edge.

Yes, I see that, but it looks like you have drawn in a completely new curve for the path that does not have quite enough points in it to hug the original edges tightly enough.

Instead of drawing a completely new path curve, you can just re-use the existing surface edges - that's the easiest way to ensure that your sweep hugs them exactly.

To do that, select all those edges that go around one loop and then use Edit/Join to glue them together into a single new curve - you can then use this new long curve as your path curve instead of trying to manually draw a new path curve.

There are a couple of places where your edges are not totally tangent to one another which will make for some small gaps in the created tube, you may need to go around and clean those up by using something like Blend between the open edges.

Does that help? Let me know if you need more information.

- Michael

I do this sometimes with my models also - I need to reinstall that Pipe modification and make sure I keep it installed!


It would be nice if there were 2 additional parameters in Pipe that would let you specify an X,Y offset from the curve.

So if I wanted to say have the pipe's center line a bit higher I could put in 0,.5 if I want the pipe to be raised a bit.

The X parameter would be similar to Offsetting the curve where I could pull the pipe inside the rail (.5,.5) or pull the pipe on the outside of the rail (-.5,.5).


Of course I could run the Offset command on the rail first to get the X offset that I need and then click and drag the rail up or down for the Y value but again, it'd be nice if there were X,Y offset fields to allow this to be done in one shot...

-Will

Hi Will, I do hope to have an option in the future for the "autoplace" sweeping mode to allow you to redefine the origin point of the shape.

That will probably be the way to define that kind of offset, rather than putting in a bunch of numeric fields for it.

I do hope in general to avoid making commands that have pages and pages of options in them, it makes things harder to use when the screen is chock full of stuff.

- Michael

Also in the next beta the regular Sweep command will be able to handle doing sweeps along multiple rails without needing to install the Pipe plugin.

If you select 3 or more rails, it will just be the equivalent of doing a 1-rail sweep along each of them.

- Michael

"Instead of drawing a completely new path curve, you can just re-use the existing surface edges - that's the easiest way to ensure that your sweep hugs them exactly.

To do that, select all those edges that go around one loop and then use Edit/Join to glue them together into a single new curve - you can then use this new long curve as your path curve instead of trying to manually draw a new path curve."

Of course!!!! And, that is brilliant!

Yep, I knew it was me. Hey, I got *that* right, at least.

Thanks, Michael.

Leonard

Hi Leonard, no problem!

Also one other note - if you need to just extract a particular edge and have it as a normal "standalone" curve, you can do that by selecting it and using Copy + Paste.

But if you want to end up with a sequence of them joined into a longer curve, you don't have to do that first, you can just use Join directly on them.

Also if you just want to use one individual edge as a rail or profile curve or something, you can just select it and use it the same as you would use a regular curve.

- Michael

Michael,
When copying edges in this manner, from an existing surfaces edges, then running "RebuildCurve" on them, I was wondering about the deviation from the original. When I run the rebuild curve, I pay attention to the "ghost original" curve, that I will be deleting, and try to add as many points as needed to have the new curve follow the original curves path. I was wondering how this new curve may be "Not equal" to the old one, in that a join of the new surface created from it to the old original surface would be "not watertight".

Is it acceptable for me to assume that my "visual reference" will work? Is there a method to be sure? is it more "grey area" and the only real way to be exact is to not rebuild it.

I appreciate your input here,
Burr

Hi Burr, it can be tough to tell exactly how much difference there is between 2 curves just by trying to eyeball them.

The best way to do this will be in the next beta - there is a new Rebuild command there that has 2 modes in it, a "Rebuild to tolerance" mode, and a "Rebuild by # of points" mode.

If you care about keeping the rebuilt curve to be a controlled distance away from the original, then you will want to use the "Rebuild to tolerance" mode - instead of specifying a number of points, it instead lets you specify a distance value and when reconstructing the curve it will use as many points as needed to keep the rebuilt version within that distance of the original.

You will generally use the number of points method when you don't care so much about maintaining the distance and just want to really reduce point count.

- Michael

Hi Burr, also why are you actually rebuilding the curve in that kind of an example where you want to maintain accuracy?

What is it that you plan to do to the curve after the rebuild?

- Michael

Well, that was embarrassingly easy.

Thanks, again.

Leonard

Hi Michael.

>>>>>What is it that you plan to do to the curve after the rebuild?>>>

I am using it for correcting geometry from other sources. WHen recieving models, sometimes they are poorley created. Instead of having to re-create a complex model, I can use Moi to extract edges and rbuild only the poor parts. Also to get cleaner surfaces from poor geometry.

Also, many people are creating stuff for "CAD/CAM" wth these other programs like corel and adobe. THe geometry comes into my cad/cam package and can become unusable. ie; a function of creating a "contour", which takes base gemetry and creates a new"directional spline" object really gets bugard up with this stuff as the fnction runs at its own tolerance and these dxf files can mangle things up. Rebuilding that curve as a proper nurbs curve is very simple and makes for an easy camming operation.

I never run it on stuff I create in MoI. Unless I am trying to get rid of a seam that is interfering with a filet or a nice blend operation. I love blend for surfaces, so this tool is nice to have this work well. But when you adjust blend to go across multiple edges, then this will not be needed for that.

MoI for me is becoming very powerful for Analyzing and fixing existing geometry. THe new tolerance feature of rebuild curve will be very cool for me. This command is very useful to me.

Wow Michael, I can always depend on you doing it the better way :-)

Boy I can't wait for the next beta!

Between MoI, ZB3.5 and now ArtRage 3 Pro, I'll be straight for a good amount of time!

-Will

Oh man, I had never heard of Art Rage. I have no clue how to draw, but this is such a really nice toolset and price that I will just have to buy it.

I really love the stencils - I was tempted to buy SketchBook Pro for its stencils and rulers but AR's is way more powerful - especially now with the v3 features.

Not being familiar with v2.5, you're seeing really the best AR has ever been right from the beginning.

The new Stickers are also an awesome addition...

-Will

You have also in Zbrush incedible tools 2D , 2.5 D (PaintStop and the new QuickSketch) ;)

Yep that's why I'll be straight once Michael drops his latest with MoI.

I've been using ArtRage however long befoore ZB had PaintStop and QuickSketch.

Up next, Lightwave CORE - that's the final egg in my software basket...

-Will