hi Michael,

That's great! Thank's a lot! I tried this network tool, but it didn't do anything. Now, with your curves setup, I seem to get it.
Is there any specific reason why you made it so big? (grid is very small on your file) Or that's just coincidence i presume?

Greetz
J

Hi Peter, the top part looks like it is made up of 2 separate curved pieces, one that goes like this:



And a separate piece running like this:



So to build something in 2 pieces like that would go something along these lines - build one main tube piece and a side profile:





Then do a boolean difference slicing the tube with the side profile - select this piece and discard it:



Then the remaining piece is I think the base form that you're looking for:




You will probably run into some difficulty filleting that specific kind of situation though - that's a "disappearing fillet" case where the fillet erodes down to zero area at the very top crown point, the fillet engine in the geometry library that MoI uses has some difficulty handling those particular kinds of cases, so that will make doing some of the rounding steps more difficult, you would probably need to do some alternate methods of putting in the rounded fillet pieces, like trimming away some area and using the Construct > Blend tool instead.

So possibly that's where you're running into some problems, that MoI's fillet engine is not good at handling this particular type of situation that you happen to be building.

- Michael

Or also another fillet technique that can work in cases where the regular edge-based filleter fails is to break the model apart into individual surfaces, and then select 2 surfaces at a time and do the fillet.

That will perform a surface/surface fillet operation which can sometimes build some fillet surfaces where the edge-based filleting mechanism can get confused.

- Michael

Another speedy try :)

Hi Peter, and actually probably the easiest way to finish the fillet is to export to a different CAD program that handles that kind of case better than MoI, do it there and then import the file back again.

A couple of programs that can help with that are Autodesk 123D (free: http://www.123dapp.com/123d) or ViaCAD ($99 http://www.punchcad.com/p-9-viacad-2d3d-v8.aspx).

What you'd probably want to do is have the initial shape have all sharp corners initially, like this (also see attached 3DM model file):



Then bring that in to 123D or ViaCAD and do the fillet there along the entire sharp edges - unfortunately this particular case just flat out does not work very well in MoI currently, and using a separate tool for doing it is likely to be the easiest method.

Hopefully more cases like this will work in the future as the people who make the geometry library that MoI uses continue to tune it up. This particular "disappearing fillet" case comes up fairly often so I will ask them about it specifically.

- Michael

an another :)

Pilou:last one is perfect..Bravo' !

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Peter<<Is there any specific reason why you made it so big? (grid is very small on your file) Or that's just coincidence i presume?>>
I did a quick sketch without using your model.I see you are new here so i just show you other alternatives:In future you'll discover many ways to get the same shape

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Michael<<Hopefully more cases like this will work in the future as the people who make the geometry library that MoI uses continue to tune it up. This particular "disappearing fillet" case comes up fairly often so I will ask them about it specifically.>>

disappearing fillet is an old problem,i found also bool-diff disappearing and so when model start to be more complex and the build of it is not always correct
while you are improving Moi with new good tools the other people don't run like you..i mean:sometime it's like a Ferrari with just one gallon of fuel in the tank
when the geometry library fails i have a try exporting in 123D to do the same operation,if fails there too i understand i followed a wrong workflow but most of the times it works
so maybe ( i say maybe) could be better to have a stronger library,that is "the core" of a modeling app,than have new tools...but unfortunately it not depends by you

Hi Mauro, booleans are generally a strong area in the geometry library that MoI uses, but fillets not so much. Fillets basically have a larger chain of complex operations that they need to perform and so correspondingly there is more that can go wrong.

Basic fillets work pretty well in MoI but things that require special case handling (like disappearing fillet is one example) tend to be problematic.

- Michael

Very nice Pilou


Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

thx all for you help!! Quite nice community in here!

@ Pilou: Is it possible you could very shortly describe what you did, stepswise? It look very interesting!

Kind regards,
Peter

Sure :) But it's only one method, surely so many other!



The key for trim anything is that ;)

A curve (surface, volume) for "trim" a volume!
With Trim = the volume stay "Open"
With Boolean Diff the volume stay "Closed"

Above i have only used a curve :)





PS A circle is sufficient even the Diff Booelan here trim the 2 sides of the piece
Just kill after the function the hole that you don't want (it's 3 clicks if it's an inner wall volume, one click if it's a surface ;)

For avoid that you can take a cylinder :)

Hi,
I have managed to produce the model using extruded solids and fillets.
The shelling was a problem but it can be done by shelling
the base and the top section separately
Hope this of some use.
If you want the file let me know and I will post it.

Barry

Allright thank you Pilou! super! I feel like my knowledge has been amplified by 3. I thnk it can be amplified by another 6000, but lets go "step by step" :-)

@ Barry-H: Thank you to! It would be nice indeed to post your file, just so I can learn from it (yeah i'm addicted to knowledge :-) )

Greetz!
P

Hi Peter,
attached is the file you requested hope it helps.

Regards
Barry