Me too....

BurrMan,
Could you give me a quick rundown on how you built that as a single solid?
Thanks,
Steve

I used 2 parts to create a blend, then removed one of the parts. Here's an example with the 2 surfaces. After blending, I deleted the bottom surface, then miirored the 2 top ones down. They can be connected and joined. For your example I used a "loft" because your model looks straight on the sides.. You could connect them with blend also, for a smoother look.

I think in the example I posted I trimmed the blend up from the bottom a little too, before I mirrored it.

Excellent thank you very much. I hadn't thought to use blend here, its not one of the tools ive played about with much.
I think I need to spend some time on the basics and getting used the different way of modeling... but thanks for your input that is very useful.
It's odd but I find myself really enjoying using Moi in the same way i used to enjoy sketching, even after a long day doing 3ds max and comping (which is far less enjoyable! - surprising what difference a nice interface and great anti-aliasing can do), never thought id find myself enjoying 3d modeling again.
Appreciate peoples time.


EDIT - Just tried your method, and although a slightly different shape as I was not following any guide, I managed to get the principle shape in about 5 mins as opposed to about half of hour messing on Friday. (just tested its construction by booleaning out a massive hole)
Will also have a proper read through Mike K4ICY tutoral as I should have done initially.

Question, just having another go at this method but im getting a little gap between one of my blends, is this quite a common problem?
Anything you can do to avoid it?

You're zoomed in pretty close there Cube, so it might be related to mesh angle. There are two things you can to try and fix this. Join the surfaces together with the join command, or if they are already joined, then go to options and select View and set the mesh angle to a lower number say 10 or even 5 since you are working on a smallish model

HTH ...

Martin

Hello,
It's not just a display issue (I also wondered this), there is a gap, when I join all the surfaces together on this one it just comes out as one 'joined surface' rather than the 'solid' of the previous one.
Also if i try to use the 'Merge' function on the edges a couple of them just wont merge together.... I was going to 'Merge' then trim slightly differently.
Anyway i'm going to install the demo on my work machine tomorrow so if I can recreate the problem ill post a 3dm file.

Thanks.

Hi Cube,

> Question, just having another go at this method but im getting a little gap
> between one of my blends, is this quite a common problem?

Yeah that can be a common problem when doing blends in multiple pieces - it looks like your lower surfaces are probably not smooth where they meet and that means that the different blend surfaces (which adapt themselves to be smooth to the surfaces involved) will bulge out in slightly different ways and then not meet up along their side walls like you show there.

In a case like that you'd need to use Network or Sweep to generate the surface instead because with those commands you can specify the "side rails" of the surface instead of only leaving the sides to be auto calculated like they are in Blend.

This problem should also be solved when Blend is updated to be able to do a longer chain of edges all in one pass rather than being limited to only be between one single edge to another single edge. I'm hoping to update Blend for that before v3 is finished.

Previously it has not been a #1 focus to get that kind of Trim + Blend style modeling as a primary method of model construction because really if you're doing that kind of modeling you're most likely trying to organic shape modeling in NURBS and that's the kind of modeling that is really best suited for polygonal sub-d modeling instead of trying to do it in NURBS in the first place. It's been more of a focus for MoI to try and perfect more of the stronger areas of NURBS modeling initially first which is more stuff like doing booleans with 2D curves as cutting objects and things like that.

When you're getting into Trim + Blend style modeling there is only really a basic level of that set up currently in MoI, so you're running into some of the limitations in that area currently.

I do expect to reduce some of these limits here in the v3 timeframe though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
I have attached a sample file.
A - Is the initial construction which is then translated to the solid B - no problem.
C - shows when the blend gap appears... you will see in the top view the only difference is that I have tapered the curve inwards, but by doing this you can no longer get the blends to meet up.
D - with this one i added some extra points to the curve and bingo it worked fine...
I'm guessing that blending is quite sensitive to the smoothness of the original line work that you draw.

All in all i've achieved what i wanted now and learnt quite a bit in the process, thank to all who have responded.

http://moi3d.com/forum/get_attachment.php?webtag=MOI&hash=6b0ece3447c8c0fbc9c0eb1d016d921b&filename=Test.3dm

Hi Cube,
I have looked at your file and see that you are blending in sections.
If you run the Rebuild command on you profiles and set the tolerance to 0.001
you will be able to blend as one surface.
If you look at the photo attached you will see I have added another model (right view top model)
where I have adjusted the top curve as it was to close to the extruded outer profile at
the one end and when blended was causing a small bulge.
Hope this helps.
Barry.

excellent! thank you very much. I had no idea you could do this. Ill take a look at your file later.

Edit - Just tried it and it works a treat, So why does a rebuild make it one continues edge rather than separate pieces (just out of interest)

Rebuild inserts more control points along the curve. Draw a curve then select show points, Now run rebuild on the curve by pressing TAB and typing Rebuild, watch the difference, it's instant!

Martin