I guess this tut is very good for me, but it seems that the China users like me is not permited to download the files in DVSHARE...

Hi Jason,

> I guess this tut is very good for me, but it seems that the
> China users like me is not permited to download the files
> in DVSHARE...

Hmmm, yeah according to DivShare here: http://blog.divshare.com/?p=130 they changed it so you can't download from Divshare from China unless you get a premium account. That's pretty annoying.

I have copied the file to the moi3d.com web server so you can download it from this link instead:

http://moi3d.com/download/Channelband2_jdk.zip

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you very much for this help. I never thought that you could answere and help my question so quick, appreciated!! By the way, I love MOI : ) To be frank, MOI is the first 3D software that I directly purchased from this site, It quite worth the price!! Moreover, I love the new function of both flow and twist on V3, if V3 is issued officially, I will definitely upgrade to V3, since I never thought a way to draw a model of stainless steel wire like attached by V2, but I can easily make that by V3, that is very cool! Just curious, do you have any ideas to draw this roud-shaped stainless steel wire(7*7) without the "flow and twist" command? If you can, kindly let me know your ideas, since I am not quite good at 3D modeling and hope your ideas can help me to open my minds a little bit : ) Thanks in advance!

Jason

Hi Jason, you're welcome and I'm really glad that you like MoI!

> Just curious, do you have any ideas to draw this roud-shaped
> stainless steel wire(7*7) without the "flow and twist" command?

Well, that's a good example of the kind of thing that would be quite difficult to do without flow and twist...

I suppose it would be a matter of constructing the proper path curves and then doing a sweep around those, but it would really require a lot of effort to manually draw the curves for those paths, as compared to using the new flow & twist commands to make them. That's why making those new commands has been a priority for v3 so far, since they really simplify certain kinds of constructions like that example.

Without flow and twist the next best thing would probably be a script that would generate the paths from some program code.

- Michael

Thanks very much again, Michael! Moreover, thanks very much to Jesse too!! the tut is quite usefull for me, since I also work in a jewelry mfg in China, and I am also in charge of designing and draw 3D models according to different request.

Michael, Actually I was trying to draw the steel cable(7*7) in V2 by using "SWEEP", just like what you said, firstly I drew a star-shaped lines, and I also found when I was doing the "SWEEP", there was an option of "twist", I tried that "twist" many times, but the curve I need seems couldn't be twisted around the center rail in some degrees, is there someplace I ignored to make sure the "twist" proceed successfully?

Hi Jason - the twist option for sweep controls which automatic method will be used for how the profile rotates as it travels along the rail path.

The Twist = "freeform" method makes the profile do a gradual rotation as the path does any banking in 3D - it tends to be good for curves that may be traveling around in numerous directions.

The Twist = "flat" method restricts the profiles to only rotate around one axis direction, this can be useful for certain kinds of constrained shapes where you do not want any "banking" in the profile as it travels along a path.

But in either case the twist option controls an automatic method for how to determine how the profile rotates around the curve tangent as it steps along the path, it does not take in any additional specified rotation factor for making a custom twist.

That might be something that I can add in a future version of Sweep, but for now to make stuff like that it's easiest to use a combination of Twist + Flow in v3 instead of sweep.

- Michael

Thanks for your detailed explanation again! Michael.