Hi,

I'm studying MoI and created some sort of grip with a 2-rail sweep and a scaling rail. Then I copied the grip's profile ellipse, placed the copy above the grip, and extruded it to try a blend surface between the two items.

But the result shows a strange artifact at the sides. Why?

My guess is that the blend surface can't handle the sharp edge at the side to calculate a proper continuity?

The 3DM file is attached, and here's a screenshot:



Thanks in advance for your help,

Metin

Hi Metin, it's hard to see since it's in such a tiny area but basically the end of your surface there folds back over itself, making a tiny self intersecting area. That kind of sudden fold in a tiny area will make Blend go crazy since it tries to maintain things perpendicular to the surface edge, and the surface form changes very suddenly in shape in a tiny area there.

If you zoom in very closely to the end area you'll see some strangely shaded stuff like this:






This kind of weird surface anomaly can happen with a scaling rail if your scaling rail ends a tiny distance before the end of the sweep, it can be good to actually extend the scaling rail out a ways past the rail to make sure it totally covers the full span of the rail and doesn't leave any uncovered area where there will be a sudden shift in shape.

Check out here for some previous discussion on scaling rails:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4434.2
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1807.7
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4785.7
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2681.3

- Michael

Very informative, many thanks, Michael!