Ok, some steps!

So let's break this shape down into some components. One big part jumping out is that torus / donut shape, let's start with that.

You probably want to turn on grid snap (click it in the bottom bar so it is highlighted in orange), and draw a circle in the top or 3D view, about 10 units or so away from the origin on the xaxis. Then select the new circle, run Construct / Revolve. Pick the first point of the revolve axis snapped to the origin, and the second point on the y axis. That gives you this:



Then I deleted the circle, you don't need it anymore. Then I went to the front view and dragged the torus up a little bit since I want to place the base underneath it and have the base be right at the origin just to make things tidy.

Ok, now for the base. You can draw the base by using Draw curve / Control points. This is generally the main tool for drawing a freeform curve. When you are placing points, you can also hold down the control key or check the "Make corner point" box to make the next point a sharp corner instead of continuing with a smooth curve.

I set the Front view to be full screen, and I turned grid snap off after placing the first point of the curve, then placed a few points and used 2 clicks with the control key to make this shape:



Then select that new curve, run Construct / Revolve again, and pick the revolve axis in the front view first point on the origin, and second point vertical (along the z axis). That will create this:



Then you can delete that curve after the revolve is done.

So now you've got 2 solids with the base punching through into the torus. Select them both and run Construct / Boolean / Union. This will fuse them together into one single solid, the part that was punching through into the torus will be thrown out.

Now for the real "Nurby" part - when you Boolean unioned the pieces together, a new edge was created where the 2 objects intersected each other. You want to select this edge and apply a fillet to round off that sharp edge.

To select the edge (actually it will be broken into 2 edges) - you do a second click on the object. The first click selects the object as a whole. After the object has "full object" selection, you can then do a second click on it to "drill in" to either an edge or face sub-selection. In this case you want to do the second click on that juncture, select both edges there:



Now run Construct / Fillet. This is the cool part! (when it works properly anyway...). When you are in the fillet command, you can either type in a numeric radius, or you can pick 2 points with your mouse and the distance between those 2 points will be used as the radius. You can enter in different radius values until you are satisfied with the result and then push done (or right-click in a viewport).

Here is a radius of 1.0 for example:



Here is a radius of 3:



And that's about it for that one!

- Michael

Again a surprising MoI model!
With this and the previous one, I understand that I can do almost everything with MoI, it's just that I don't have much time to practice...

BTW, collecting all these shapes and tutorials to a big advanced MoI tutorial is a great idea, maybe Michael you should add tuts like that with the documentation or as extra downloads. They will be very useful for all of us

Yes, I agree these quizzes are great along with any corrections or best practices from Michael will get us all up to speed using MOI efficiently on the quickness! ;-)

-Will

Michael, thanks again. Another comprehensive and valuable lesson. The more of these I see, the more pennies drop into place.

Cheers.

Sorry for being a new dumb member.

This is in relation to Michaels little tute.689.5

1. I presume with MoI that x is l to r, y is vertical, and x is depth.

2. I am completely lost with the sentence, "Pick the first point of the "revolve"? axis? snapped to the "oriigin"?, and the second point on the Y axis."

(I have tried all of the alternatives I can think of without getting the expected results.)

Hi Brian,

> 1. I presume with MoI that x is l to r, y is vertical, and x is depth.

MoI uses a coordinate system where x and y are flat on a tabletop, like a blueprint for a building. If you are looking straight down at the blueprint x is running from left to right, and y is running vertically.

Then the z direction protrudes upwards from the tabletop surface. If you can imagine the lines of your blueprint pushing up into walls, the walls would be extending along the z axis direction.

When you switch between different views, you end up looking at different world axis directions. Like for instance from the top view the x axis travels left and right along the screen and the y axis travels up and down on the computer monitor screen. If you switch to a "front" view, then it is the z axis that is running up and down on the monitor.


> 2. I am completely lost with the sentence, "Pick the first point of the
> "revolve"? axis? snapped to the "oriigin"?, and the second point on the Y axis."

The "Revolve axis" is a line that you draw inside the revolve command - it defines the "hinge" that will be used to swing your profile curve around to create the revolve.

This might be clearer:



First, select the circle, then run Construct / Revolve. There will be a prompt in the upper-right corner of the window that says "Pick revolve axis start point". This means that MoI is waiting for you to pick one point to define the base point of the revolve axis, pick it in the spot indicated above - this is the world origin and there should be an "origin" snap when you move close to it unless you have turned off Object Snaps in the bottom bar.

After you click that point, the prompt will change to say "Pick revolve axis end point" - so now pick the second point shown above. This is along the world y axis, which is the vertical direction when looking from the Top view.

After you pick those 2 points in that direction, it will generate this type of a revolved surface:





You can kind of see that the circle was rotated around that line, with the line acting as kind of like the pin in a door hinge.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Thanks again Michael. The original "tute" says to draw the circle about 10 units away from the origin on the axis.

I took that to mean that the radius woud be 10 units away from a start point from that "origin axis"

The interpretation of word meanings are peculiar and, while I can see where I differed, I think I could easily make a similar misinterpretation of a similar sentence construction in another situation.

Silly billies like me are everywher!!!!!

Hi Brian, one thing I'd like to do is set up more tutorials using that screen capture video style stuff.

I think those will be clearer and generally have less interpretation difficulties. I'm not sure yet if those will be faster for me to make than this style though.

- Michael