I'm not too disappointed in how this new N-Sided works.

In my head, I thought it would be created more logically like a Sweep or Network where the surface seemed to be defined by the implied dynamics of the edge curve, but this one of course, works more like a bubble, or sheet of rubber.

The star point and lines that rib to the center seem to have a mind of their own.

I need to post some examples, of course, but sometimes it seems to patch very well, and with a few other tries, I get something unexpected.

I've also noticed times where N-Sided doesn't activate. Maybe because the edges were not connected very well - which happens to be times when I really need to fudge a surface with a patch! ;-)

So it has it's own design benefits!



I know the N-Sided tool is really still a 'beta' work-in-progress... so lets have fun with it. ;-)


Here is a more complicated area that gave me some trouble:
The edges are more cleanly transitioned, but there are incongruent slice-edges through the interior of the major patch.




I tried the N-Sided patch here with some success, but in the trade-off, the perimeter edges of the patch are kinda creased or the curvature in not contiguous.




And here I tried to do a straight-forward patch, but I learned that N-Sided was not so friendly with whatever was going on here.
Bulge=1


Bulge<1

i'm not disappointed either, i think it's great. I have a few models where i have gone back and replaced a patch, i created in viaCad with a n-sided moi patch :)

Hi Steve, it doesn't really work well with highly concave holes like the ones there are good examples of what won't work.

For stuff like that you'll need to kind of reduce the area of the hole by filling in some of the star arms with other modeling techniques, until you have a somewhat more regular shaped remaining hole to fill in.

Do you have any examples of other CAD software that filled in those holes very well? I'm thinking that in the future there may be a few different modes for n-sided hole filling which use different methods.

I'm going to be traveling for the rest of the day here, so I'll be offline for a while, more comments and answers when I return.

- Michael

I agree... and on relatively flat surfaces, N-Sided does a nice job.

> Do you have any examples of other CAD software that filled in those holes very well?


Hi Michael,

I have some suggestions (just thoughts off the top of my head):

1)

I'm not sure how this patch thing works:


I know It's in Rhino, it makes NURBS surfaces, and I saw a tutorial video where the guy could choose tangent joints or not for each side with little radio buttons.


2)

It seems straight forward to be able to have a mode that does a logical 4 or 3 sided Blend. It would be kind of a "cross-blend", averaging between each of cardinal directions as far as side orientation.
As if the Blend tool was able to handle two directions in concert.
You can do this with the Sweep tool, taking two edge curves and sweeping them along the adjacent edge curves as rails - but it would make the surface joints tangent!

N-Sided can do this, but I don't think it knows how to work overall tangentcy and surface continuity as Blend does between two surface edges now.

Therefore, the more swoopy, curvy surface/holes, as far as the ones between 3-4 sided holes would make sense.

That would be one I could really use.


3)

Also, the ability for regular 2-separate-side Blend as we enjoy already to be able to see multi-segmented edges as whole surface edges by which to blend between. Not a patch, but a way for MoI to see a bunch of contiguous adjacent edge segments as one edge by which to start or end a two-sided blend to.

Oooh yeah! ;-)



Still, not so graceful along the more broad areas, but definitely a good solution we didn't have before.

>Michael
>Do you have any examples of other CAD software that filled in those holes very well? I'm thinking that in >the future there may be a few different modes for n-sided hole filling which use different methods.

The star, no, viacad just created a flat surface, with the model with the creased patch, viaCAD created a cleaner patch... Not perfect....

Viacad nsided patch is described has a tangent patch. I guess that's a different sort of patch?

With the star , I was quite impressed with the patch, if there was some way to have a option that made all surfaces created on the "inside", the star patch would be fine. Not sure this make any sense

I really have not idea how MoI works, just love using it :) still have miles to learn only just started changing cplane during modelling :)


Also Michael , your nsided patcher is way quicker then the nsided patcher in viacad :)