I need help with flow command.

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 From:  Rudy
5324.1 
Hello Michael,
How are you? This is Rudy.
guys....\

I am tying to wrap around (flow around) a pattern to my external surface of ring (see file).

here is how I understand the procedure, but do not get the result.

1- I click flow command, select object to flow. Here I put the cursor on the corner of patter (marked in red). It highlights. Click done
2- Select "base curve or surface".
Here it is where it gets heird.... My ring here gets divided in two sections (see image2). WHY?
So , I click on the edge of my half-ring , it highlights, and it prmpt me again with a "select target surface near matching edge side" and I click on the edge of other half-ring (original edge matching pattern)
3- my pattern duplicates. If I mark "rigid" the straight, duplicated pattern mirrors. If I check "flip surface normal" it produces something......(see image 4)

What am I doing wrong. Why my ring get's divided in two sections?

Thank you for your time. I love MOI.
But I have so many things to learn......
can somebody explain me in details how this works?
Thank you.

Rudy
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 From:  bemfarmer
5324.2 In reply to 5324.1 
Base curve or surface is a "helper" surface, not the target.
Add one more surface, like a flat plane, the size of your source pattern.
It can be directly below, and touching the source pattern. Could color it green, to help in selection...

The ring is the target, you only need one...

(part of source cut away to show green rectangle planar)
(I'm an amateur, so the other guys likely have better help.) :-)

EDITED: 10 Aug 2012 by BEMFARMER

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 From:  Michael Gibson
5324.3 In reply to 5324.1 
Hi Rudy,

> Why my ring get's divided in two sections?

Your ring is made up of more than one surface - it looks like you created it from a revolve initially and if you go to the profile you used to do the revolve, it's made up of several segments with 2 lines going across it instead of just one big line. You can see that more easily if you select your starting profile and then use Edit > Separate on it, that will break apart the sub segments into individual pieces that you can select.

Here I've used Edit > Separate on that profile curve and selected the different segments so you can see how the curve is structured:



When your profile curves are broken into several different segment pieces like that, then the revolve or other surfaces that are generated from them will be divided into the same kind of structure as well.

So if you wanted to generate a revolve without multiple pieces across you would want to delete those 2 little lines going across the profile and instead have one single large line that goes across, then the revolve would be one piece.

(and actually it looks like you're using Sweep for generating this - I'd recommend Revolve for circular shapes instead of sweep, Revolve will make more exact and also at the same time more lightweight surfaces for circular shapes).

- Michael
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 From:  Michael Gibson
5324.4 In reply to 5324.1 
Hi Rudy,

> Here it is where it gets heird.... My ring here gets divided in two sections (see image2). WHY?

Your ring is already divided into two sections just in how it is structured - notice how before doing any flow at all there is an edge running down the middle of it?

It's made up of two faces going across because your original profile curve was made up of 2 lines going across instead of just a single line going across.


Also the other thing that you're missing is having a base surface - you've got an object to deform and a target surface, but the way Flow works is that you need 3 pieces of information - an object to deform, a "base surface" (which you are missing, it would normally be an additional separate plane underneath your object to deform), and then a target surface, which here you would want to be a single surface on your ring so you would want to fix the profile curve structure to just be made up of line line across and reconstruct it to get a good single target surface.

- Michael
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 From:  Rudy
5324.5 In reply to 5324.3 
Hi Benfarmer,
thank you for the tip. I made it.
And Michael, thank you (I made it by benfarmer tip on half of the ring...as it highlighted only half). Now will correct the profile....

Thank you guys.

Rudy
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 From:  Michael Gibson
5324.6 In reply to 5324.1 
Hi Rudy, please check out the attached file which has things ready to go now. I've modified your file in 2 particular ways - first I simplified the structure of your profile curve used to create the ring to make it be made of just one line across instead of 2 lines across, so now when generating the ring it is all one single surface there. And the other thing is I've added a plane underneath the pattern object so that you have a base surface to use for doing Flow.

Now in order to do the Flow, start out initially by selecting the object that you want to deform, so your screen should look like this - note _only_ the object to be deformed is selected, and not the base plane surface underneath it:




Now that you have the object you want to be modified selected, you can now run the Transform > Deform > Flow command. It will prompt you to select a base curve or surface. The base surface here is that plane object that is underneath your object. Note that the place you click on to select the plane is significant - you must click on a matching spot on the target surface and that will control how your pattern is placed.

You need to pick near one side of the surface and not quite in the exact corner but instead a little ways to one side of the corner, so for example here is a good spot to click on the base surface:



Clicking in that spot will anchor the shape to that particular side of that long edge. So now you want to click on one side of the long edge of the ring in order to match the directions up. The similar spot on the ring is most easily reached by looking from the bottom of it upwards, click in this spot right here:



Then the Flow will be calculated and your object will be deformed onto the ring:



You probably want to make the base plane to have a length of about the same size as the circumference of your ring circle to reduce stretching distortion.

It may also be easier in some aspects to do a "curve to curve" flow rather than a "surface to surface" flow. For a "curve to curve" flow you would have a line and a circle curve as the base and target object rather than surfaces.

But anyway if you want to use surface to surface flow the main problem you had previously was it looked like you were just completely missing the base plane that should be underneath the object giving it the sort of source reference frame. The way Flow works is it maps an object that is sitting on one base surface to have the same relation on a bendy target surface. So you need to have both a base plane as well as a target plane set up for it.

- Michael

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 From:  Rudy
5324.7 In reply to 5324.6 
Thank you Michael!
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