Hi, I have a lot of slices that I trimmed down to the shape of a particular solid object. I want to make some minor modifications to these and then CNC cut them. The slices are all sections of flat planes, in the shape of the cross-section of the object at that position. So what I need, instead of the shaped surface, is the closed curve of its perimeter.

So far, the best thing I have come up with is to select the surface, select each line segment of its outline, copy these, paste them, and join them into a closed curve. I have a lot of slices, though, and many of them have multiple sets of edges (the original solid has holes in it, torus-like). I can do this process for each slice if I must, but is there a better way? Some kind of outlining tool?

thanks for any suggestions, experts!

Rachel

Select Naked edges and hit join.....

Hi Rachel,

> So far, the best thing I have come up with is to select the surface, select each line segment
> of its outline, copy these, paste them, and join them into a closed curve.

That should work ok, and then to speed up this process you can select all edges of everything at once and that way you won't have to go through the surfaces one by one.

You can select all edges of everything using the Scene Browser - go to the Types section of the scene browser which has entries there for doing operations on all objects of a certain type like hiding all solids, selecting all curves, etc... One of the available types listed there are "Edges" - if you use that entry you will be working on all edges.

To use the scene browser to select all edges, click on the selection indicator dot on the right-hand side of the line, here:




With one click on that particular spot all edges of every visible object will get selected without you needing to go click on them individually and then you can do your copy/paste/join steps to them all at once.

- Michael

Hi Rachel, also a different way to generate your curves from your base solid is to draw a line and then replicate it using the Transform > Array > Dir command so you have a set of lines, then select the lines and run Construct > Curve > Project to project those lines onto the solid. The result will be planar section cut curves through your solid.

The arrangement of lines would look like this example here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4295.3

- Michael

Wow both of those techniques will be much better than what I thought of. Thank you!

Rachel