Thanks! I cleaned up my first draft myself and rendered it with Indigo via Sketchup. I managed to join all surfaces but can't get a solid out of them. One or more of my edges must not be contiguous? Some feedback might be useful there. If Moi turned contiguous surfaces purple, for example? f

Hi Fraser,

I did notice a few edges that needed to be merged together. That cleaned things up quite a bit.

Michael T.

Using the "Get Naked Edges" script from the Petr's MoI page at the resources tab of moi3d.com will show you where the issues are.

Hi fraser,

> I managed to join all surfaces but can't get a solid out of them.

The attachment that I posted above had your object as a solid, here is a direct link to it:

http://moi3d.com/forum/get_attachment.php?webtag=MOI&hash=c925ce1225c8eb1ca889a9c83cb358d7&filename=mezzo_solid_3DM.zip

If you need to have a solid, will that version above work for you?

Like Burr mentions, the best way to see why your object is not a solid is to set up the "select naked edges" script on a shortcut key and use that.

Here is a direct link to that script:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#SelectNaked

To set it up, you go to Options > Shortcut keys, push "Add", then put in the key you want to trigger it on the left-hand column and paste in the script for the right-hand "Command" column. Then when you push that key all the unattached edges in your model will get selected so you can see where they are.

- Michael

I managed to get a solid out of my 32 surfaces when I swapped a network of curves for four 90 deg rail revolves which produced matching edges (not naked?). Now I'm trying to filet them. Although the two lower quarters work, I can't figure out how to filet the lofted edges of the other two. I thought that replacing them with a sweep might work but I keep getting some odd edges. I'd be happy to revert to a loft if someone can suggest how to filet around a joined surface. f

Hi fraser, is it possible for you to post the model that you are trying to fillet?

Fillet does not like to have things like little tiny edges or edges broken up into many segments when they could be a longer single edge.

You could try the Merge command (which you need to type in by pushing Tab and then type "Merge" and push Enter) which will glue fragmented edges that touch each other smoothly into longer edges.

Another possibility for getting a fillet in some difficult situations is to use the surface/surface filleter instead of the edge-based filleter.

To use the surface/surface filleter, you use Edit/Separate to break your object down into individual surfaces and select 2 surfaces and then run the Fillet command.

That does a somewhat different mechanism for calculating the fillet which analyzes the surfaces more directly to generate it rather than trying to follow along the edges. The edge-following one can be more convenient since it can do things like build corner patches where several edges come together, the surface/surface one does not do things like corner patches.

But the edge-based filleter has a more difficult job to do so it can get confused and fail somewhat more easily than the surface/surface filleter.

It's hard to give very specific advice about this by just looking at a screenshot instead of examining an actual model though.


Filleting in general has a lot of difficult calculations that it needs to do so it is pretty easy for it to fail if you've got problematic geometry like little slivery surfaces, tiny edges, lumpy or bumpy surfaces, surfaces that fold back on top of themselves or have self-intersections. Also surfaces that touch each other with only a slight crease between them (instead of touching smoothly or more distinctly sharply) can tend to be difficult.

If I could examine your model that would help me to see if you are running into any of those kinds of things.


- Michael

That information helped a lot. An edge filet worked for me where a surface filet produced some odd results. f

Hi fraser, it looks like you have a good result there now!

Do you have any more problems that you need solved with this, or is it finished?

- Michael

One quick question: if i need to change the geometry of a model can I somehow glue generated surfaces to their curves and just edit them? Or do I need to delete the original surfaces, edit the curves, and resurface? f

ps The scale down and join trick works perfectly!

Hi fraser,


Currently you'll generally need to do the delete, edit the curves, and resurface method.

In the future I want to work on adding in a deeper history mechanism so that you could be able to do things like update a final model by adjusting some of its original input curves.

Right now that does work to a certain extent like after you do a sweep you can adjust the input curves and the sweep will update. But if you do some other kinds of edits to the sweep surface like boolean or trim them then you won't be able to do the automatic history update after that.

- Michael