Hi,

BEWARE COMPLETE NOOB.

I'm just working through the tutorials.

Just playing with the blend tool and I'm trying to blend the the two shapes but nothing is happening. Its caught me out.

Wonder if someone can shed some light, obviously something I'm not doing correctly or silly :)


2) What's the easiest way to create a tube. At this time all I can think of is a boolean diff a smaller cylinder away from a larger one

Thanks
Steve

Hello,

Perhaps you are selecting the separate curve at the bottom of the cylinder instead of the edge of the cylinder itself? Try selecting the closed edge at the bottom of the cylinder, then select the bottom edge of the cylinder and the top edge of the hole of the wavy object and it should work just fine. Hope this helps. I know things like this threw me for a loop until I realized I was selecting the wrong item.

Hello,

When doing things like blends I like to go over to the Scene Browser > Types > Curves on the right side of the screen and click the eyeball to hide all the Curves temporarily, it makes it easier to select the edges of the solids I want to modify.

Hi OSTexo,

lol your right, When I extruded the circle to form a cylinder I was trying to blend using the original circle not the edge of the newly formed cylinder.

emmm so it leaves a copy of your shape after the operation (blend etc).

Thanks for the advice

Steve

Along with not selecting "curves" and being sure to use "surface edges" when running the blend command, the blend will want "Open edges".. So on your cylinder, delete the bottom face of it by clciking the cylinder, then clciking again on the bottom face (A drill in selection) and deleting it.. Do the same for the inner wall surface of the cutout. The 2 edges will then blend.

The boolean command will work with curves also.. So if you have a solid and create a circle curve in front of it, from the front view, the boolean diff will punch the circle out of your solid (The same as extruding the circle through it, and using the boolean diff with the created cylinder) If the "tube" needs to follow a 3d path, then use the sweep command and boolean diff that.

Cheers BurrMan , much appreciated!

Steve

Last question of the night regards closing (sealing) a open shape.

In my test file I have extruded a tear shape and given it a nice fillet.
How would I close this (seal)

Steve

Here is a quick video of your first file.



As an addition, I wanted to point out the 3 tutorials Michael made are unique. (They are here: http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/tutorials.htm)

Unlike My video, that may show you a couple things, These 3 are "VERY WELL THOUGHT OUT AND PLANNED!" They suprisingly cover a comrehensive use of MoI. They are short and easy to review, and will go far in learning to use MoI.

yep, I am currently going through these tuts .

Thanks for the quick video BurrMan,

very helpful :)

For a tube, all you need to do is draw two concentric circles. Then you can select them both and run Extrude. A tube will be the result. Saves a few steps.

cool, thanks Steve

Suppose to going out but cant leave this alone :)

I going through what's been mention all ready.

I have punched out a rectangle (using boolean diff with rectangle curve) in my hallow tube but having issues with blending (connecting) the holes through the tube.

I have notices that I can't select all the sides in the punched hole in one selection, this might have something to do with it

Steve

Hi Steve - so in your last model there you've got an open surface instead of a solid.

What you probably want to do is to make it into a solid first before you actually cut the rectangular hole in it - one way of doing that easily with that shape is to select it and run the Construct > Planar tool, which will build trimmed planes through any planar openings and join them in to seal them off, then you'll have a solid.

Then when you do a boolean on a solid with a curve, the result will be a solid too - when cutting a volume the curve will basically leave behind the "side walls" parts of where it was extruded. This won't happen if you are not cutting a solid object.

Basically the booleans are kind of more oriented towards working with solids, you can also use the Trim command to cut things up as well in addition to the booleans, but booleans are kind of like a "batch mode" trim, where they not only cut things up but also decide which pieces to keep based on which volume the pieces are in, if that makes any sense.

So basically when doing booleans it tends to be easiest to be doing the boolean on a solid object as the base object instead of an open surface that does not define a totally closed volume.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Hi Steve, also see here for another similar example:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1359.2

So note there that with the base object as a solid, when it is cut it results in the cut up pieces being solids as well - basically the side wall portion of the curve's extrusion gets incorporated into the model in that case.

That doesn't happen if you are cutting a non-solid object, because basically the curve gets punched out into an extruded surface and when your base object is not a solid it doesn't really know how to determine which piece of the extrusion is the outer part (sticking to the outside of the solid) versus which part is inside of it. When you're doing the boolean on a closed solid as the base piece, it's able to then figure out what pieces are outside the volume and what pieces are inside and that makes the side wall pieces come out as well.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

It's slowly sinking in now :)

But just for argument sake, I wanted just to bridge that gap between the rectangular cuts I made in my open surface, could it be done.ie extrude the edges across and somehow join the points.

Or should I not go there.

""""""""""But just for argument sake, I wanted just to bridge that gap between the rectangular cuts I made in my open surface"""""""""

Select the model, then select all 8 edges of the 2 openings and choose Join from the edit menu. Be sure the 2 new squares are selected and run Loft.

Hi Steve, yeah if you wanted to construct the side walls manually from just those edges, you could do that by selecting a pair of edges at a time and then using the Construct > Loft command to build a loft surface between those 2 edge curves.

Then once you have build up the 4 sides you can select those sides and the outer piece and use Edit > Join to glue them together. Then since the other openings are planar the other ones can get filled in by selecting the whole shape and doing Construct > Planar to build planar end caps on those spots.

But basically you use Loft for doing a "bridge between 2 curves".

EDIT: Burr beat me to it again! :)

Burr's method is kind of more efficient because by joining the 4 edges into one curve you can then do just one loft between those curves.

- Michael

Free forming:

Pretty cool to see you cook this thing up, Burr!

Some audio too. ;-)

Hey Burr, some great stuff there, you've really gotten the hang of the "get the modeling done quickly" kind of vibe!

- Michael