In Turbocad, you can change a solid to a surface, and in most instances a surface into a solid, only problem is when you convert a solid to a surface, it has faceted sides, and if you the change it back to a solid, you end up with a solid with faceted sides. The big advantages in cad would be a surface or SMesh representation of a solid, which would require far less memory to manipulate.

Hi Mike,

> only problem is when you convert a solid to a surface, it
> has faceted sides, and if you the change it back to a solid,
> you end up with a solid with faceted sides.

Yes, but that "only problem" is a huge problem because having your entire solid model turn into a solid model with flat facets will usually pretty much destroy your model. After you've done that you've basically lost many of the nice properties of solids modeling, stuff like having actual precise spheres and cylinders and all of that stuff.

Also since now your solid model is itself faceted, everything that you export to will think that the model is actually supposed to be totally faceted so you'll get flat shaded appearance in renderings, etc... Having a solid model that's made up of all facets is not good, unless it is supposed to be physically faceted like a diamond or something only made of boxes.

Getting a bunch of facets as your solid model is not the same thing as making facets for exporting to a polygon format like OBJ - polygon files are supposed to be made up of facets. Solids modeling data is supposed to be made up of broad curved surfaces, stuff like one sphere surface for a spherical piece of the model, etc...

- Michael

"""""""""Even the regreted Amapi who mixed Polygon in a same program and nurbs don't transform Polys to nurbs! ;)"""""""

Well, it DOES have this command in it, but it was very limited and pretty much only worked with Planar type faceted data.. Anything actually curved surface type would crash the app.

Another 'draping' method http://forum.alibre.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=9139 using blender... I don't know if it helps... Read from post #7

I had a look at the wrapped cloth link, and found this blender YouTube video, amazing what can be done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_fLoZ74fnc

Michael, I have been trying some of the different tools out in MOI, and am fascinated, I have saved as sat in Turbocad, which appears to give the best results when opened in MOI, done some editing and boolean's, and saved the sat from MOI, and find the profiles are spot on when opened in Turbocad, smooth as. One of the main problems with complex lofts or sweeps in Turbocad, is solids cannot self intersect on the path, but MOI does not appear to have this restriction as far as I can tell. It would be nice if solid modelling engines would allow re-entrant solids, by overwriting the existing solid information as it intersects itself. I have tried a number of the tools out, and the network surface is very interesting, and will be of great use to me. You have got me hooked.

This week, I have tried Daz 3D Studio, Bryce, Hexagon, Sculptris, Moi, and am about to have a dabble with Blender also.

Lots to learn with the new tool sets and methods, but MOI will be a great addition to my software collection.

Many thanks for the feedback and links everyone.

Mike Geraghty.

Just found some updated information on the new Turbocad SMesh Michael, it looks very promising, an SMesh can be converted to a solid.

Here is the information that is starting to be compiled for Turbocad V19 documentation.

https://docs.imsidesign.com/display/TC19UG/Converting+a+SMesh

If this works out as well as it is described, a major movement in the interaction between the two modelling methodologies.

Hi Mike, I'm glad that you are getting more familiar with MoI!

> One of the main problems with complex lofts or sweeps in Turbocad,
> is solids cannot self intersect on the path, but MOI does not appear
> to have this restriction as far as I can tell.

MoI will not prevent you from creating a self-intersecting surface for stuff like sweep or loft, but it can cause problems later on to construct things like that. It's ok if the only thing that you're going to be doing with the surface is to export it to make a rendering, but if you're going to be doing more modeling operations like things that involve surface/surface intersections, those will usually not work properly on self-intersecting areas of surfaces.

Basically a self intersection on a surface causes a solid that contains that surface to no longer have a distinct inside and outside region and so things that depend on a clear difference between inside and outside will get confused by such shapes.


> https://docs.imsidesign.com/display/TC19UG/Converting+a+SMesh
>
> If this works out as well as it is described, a major movement
> in the interaction between the two modelling methodologies

It seems to be saying that it will generate a faceted solid though - if so then that's not really going to be a viable solution except for certain special case type shapes that are actually meant to be faceted in their accurate representation, like a diamond gem or boxy stuff.

In general a solid that is made up of a zillion little triangle facets is not the kind of structure that solids modeling methods are set up to work with.

- Michael

I've used ViaCAD 2D/3D to import OBJ files from Sculptris. I then change the object type from facets to solids (or you can do surfaces). I can then export IGES, STEP or SAT files to import into MoI for reference geometry.