Hi Rudy, you can use your curves to cut some other solid or surface. There are a couple of different ways to do it, one of the easiest ways is to select both your solid and the cutting curve and then run Construct / Boolean / Merge. This will slice your solid by the curve and leave all the pieces behind, then you delete the pieces you don't want to keep.

However, some of your drawn curves won't work for this as they currently are, since not all of them are closed. To cut a surface, the curve should either be closed, or it needs to divide the surface fully into 2 different parts.

Here is one quick example:



To create this, I first drew a kind of shallow arc shape in the front view using Draw curve / Freeform / Control points. Then I extruded it so that it extended over top of your sun face, and then thickened that extruded surface into a solid by using Construct / Offset / Shell. This resulted in a kind of slab that was over top of your curves.

Then I selected the thick slab, and the curves that you drew that were closed, and used Construct / Boolean / Merge to slice it up, and deleted the unwanted pieces.

Let me know if you would like more details on this method.


For bas-relief, MoI doesn't really have any tools that are oriented towards this type of modeling. For that type of a thing you'll probably need to use some more specialized software, I think one commonly used one is ArtCAM, but I'm not really familiar with it.

It is possible to do some kinds of relief work by trimming holes and then putting in some blends, but it is rather difficult work and isn't quite the same thing as generating a relief directly from your sketch.

- Michael

Dear Michael,
Thank you for your suggestions.
I am playing around a bit ....., and I think can simulate a relief eventually.
But take a look at this.
I would like to filet the hard edges on my "sun".

Cannot do it.
Why?

Rudy

Hi Rudy, fillet generally won't work properly if there are small or compressed areas that would cause the fillet pieces to run over top of each other.

Here is one such problem area in your model:



There isn't enough room in there to fit simple fillet pieces.

Also areas that have a very tightly curved bend in them tend to cause similar "not enough room" problems as well.

These types of situations need to be avoided in order to get successful fillets.

In this case some of the edges will fillet if you use a small enough radius, like the outside edge of the shape and all the bottoms of the sphere pieces will fillet at a radius of 0.01 .

- Michael

Michael,
I meant the outer countour (in the sun).
And yes, I got the problem that if the radius is bigger than the actual piece, will not work....
Any idea why the outer countour will not filet? Perhaps some sharp curves, causes MOI to think there is no room to filet properly....

Also, take a look at this file.
I have fileted the different solids OK, except the smaller free form.
Do not have any idea why...

Rudy

Forgot the file

Rudy

> Any idea why the outer countour will not filet?

Hi Rudy, it does seem to fillet ok over here if I use a radius of 0.01 or 0.02 - but not anything much larger than that.

Does that not work for you?

Sometimes you have to go pretty small with the radius.


> Also, take a look at this file.

Oops, doesn't look like the file got attached, can you re-post it?

- Michael

> I have fileted the different solids OK, except the smaller free form.
> Do not have any idea why...

In this case it is due to the shape not being entirely smooth, there are 2 spots where it comes to a sort of shallow sharp point.

This is another situation that complicates things for the filleter - when things are completely smooth it generates a simple fillet as a single piece. When things aren't smooth, the filleter has to try to extend and intersect the fillet pieces and doing that at shallow angles tends to be somewhat unreliable.

As you can see, it is not difficult to have situations that won't fillet well. Shapes that don't have unnecessary sharp bits or unnecessary edges in them will tend to work better.

- Michael

Thank you Michael,
I got the lesson.

And yes, I did filet the outer sun contour with a radius of 0.015 ...everything is working well...learning....

Thank you very much!
Rudy