Here is the outline of an area I am working with.

I have tried everything I can think of to create a surface or a thin solid and have had no luck so far. Sweep, loft, network. I tried to extrude it so I could do a boolean but only get sidewall surfaces (not a solid). I even tried Rhino Drape.

I think there must be some way to do this but I simply cannot discover it and need some help.

thanks,
eric

Hi eric - it's unfortunately quite difficult to build a surface directly to a sort of undulating non-planar path curve like that particularly when it has all sorts of sharp cutouts in it...

The closest thing to a ready-made tool would be Rhino's Patch command, which can fit a surface to a set of sampled points. But it tends to be hard to get the surface to very accurately hug to such a detailed path.

Usually it's better to build a larger extended wavy surface by something like loft or sweep to define the overall surface shape, and then trim that surface with a 2D plan view of the detailed outline, rather than trying to directly surface a 3D waving outline itself...

Can you maybe give a little bit more background information on how the heights of the non-planar outline you've got there have been specified? I mean does it have to match up with other pieces or .... ? I'd mainly try to think about how to build a surface using a more simple layout of cross sections in something more like a 4 sided layout.

Anyway as a first stab try the Patch command in Rhino, and see if it will fit a reasonable surface through that.

- Michael

That outline is not level in the Z axis, i guess that so by purpose.
In general I would say that the layout is too complicated to get that shape into a surface in one step.
You may want to try to do that by breaking that shape into multiple parts and then join the resulting surfaces.
Also, if you can get rid of the distortion on the Z axis would be of great help.
In a short try I was able to turn at least a part of your shape into surfaces. So the rest shoud be possible too.

Regards
Heiner

Hi Michael ...

This is a driveway surface that has to conform to the finished contours of the land. So I got its outline by projecting a planar outline to the overall property surface.

It just occurred to me this morning that I can probably extrude the outline through the site surface and then trim to create a separate surface for this driveway surface. I'll see if that is possible.

cheers,
eric

Yes, that worked ...

cheers,
eric

It's not perfect but it matches the contours established by the engineer who planned the overall site grading.
cheers,
eric

Looks pretty good eric! Yes, usually it's better when you have an irregular outline like this to have a broader surface that then gets cut by the outline rather than trying to build a new surface directly through something that does not have some regular shape.

You can also use the Edit > Trim command for doing that - Trim has projection built into it so you can skip some steps, instead of projecting the curve onto the site surface as a separate step, you can select the site surface, run Edit > Trim and then pick the 2D curve as the cutting object and that should then project the 2D curve onto the site surface and use it to cut the site surface as well.

- Michael