Hi Marv
Thanks for the complement but there are much better artists lurking on this forum.
This is how I approached making it https://youtu.be/oIjFaWogIqs Its speeded up a bit but I think its followable. I can put up the original version if you would prefer. I think the shelling might be difficult to achieve but I suspect that there are others on this forum that know about printing out real objects and they may well help you out. I will continue to experiment but I work full time and have a family so I seldom get more than a few minutes at a streach.
Keith
Does anyone know why I can't shell the Radial.3dm (Radial.zip) that I have posted to this thread? I have rebuilt the model and tried again but Moi just says it's "calculating" forever or "calculation failed". Parts of it will shell if separated but not the whole thing in one go.
A bit off topic I know but, while I can shell it in 3d coat I have a simular problem saving it as an STL file as the program uses up lots of processor time and memory without producing any output.
Keith
Hi Keith - shell is probably the weakest function in MoI currently, it's a very complex operation since any surfaces that do not meet up smoothly will not have offsets that exactly meet up and they will need to be extended and intersected with each other. The geometry library that MoI uses doesn't have a very good mechanism for that. It can work for simple cases but with 392 faces in your model that's a lot of extensions and intersections to be calculated. Then on top of that you've got some small sized features and surfaces with tight bends in them and if your shell offset distance is larger than the size of those small feature that's an additional difficulty.
You might try bringing it into something like OnShape which has a much more sophisticated shell function, but it's probably going to be difficult to shell anywhere.
You could probably make some progress on building a shell by using Edit > Separate to break some of the large surfaces out to individual surfaces and then use offset on those surfaces to build some pieces and then work on filling in the gaps.
Wow, Keith that looks super impressive! I haven't modeled anything like this before so it's cool to see someone do it. Also thank you so much for the YouTube link
Hi Kuro
Thank you and you're welcome. It's a shame it doesnt shell very well for the purposes of 3d printing which is what Marv was trying to achieve. Of course with moi there will be a better way of making the same thing.
Keith
I take Keith's Radial file, then de-feature and shell the base shape. Then I can join the shelled result onto the top detail:
This is leaving the detail at a larger depth. If that little extra material "Just had to be removed", I would handle this by keeping the original "Spoke" pieces as they were before the Boolean. Most likely these can be shelled as separate objects. They can then, at this stage, be Boolean cut from the underside, to create that part of the shell.
The depth of my shell was a bit greater than was mentioned (.03125). I would have had to remove the cuts between the spokes, then recut them after, because they are deeper than that.
Hi BurrMan
I didnt know you could Join object like that, so thanks for the video. I did do this which seems simpler but no way could I shell the whole thing. I even tried onshape as advised by Michael. It must sometimes be really frustrating to do this sort of thing for a living and to a deadline.
