hi,

i try for a several time to create the body of this subject. but i get not this results i'm looking for. maybe somebody can give me a tip. thanks a lot.

Hi Jack - one possibility is to take the 2 longer curves and split them up so that they are in 2 pieces.

If they are intersecting each other you can do that by selecting them, run Edit/Trim, then push Done (to indicate that they will cut each other), then Done again (to indicate to keep all pieces).

Once those are split into pieces they will form a network which can be surfaced by selecting all the curves and running Construct / Network.

If you need more help, could you please post the .3dm model file and your image backgrounds? That would make it easier for me to try different things.

- Michael

hi michael,

many thanks for your help ... enclosed the .3dm file

Hi Jack - looks like when doing the Trim you need to turn off "Project intersections" or else it will find additional splitting points between the flattened projections of the curves and end up slicing things up into several additional smaller pieces near the left-side tip.

Maybe I should fix this up so that if the 2 curves to be trimmed already intersect, it won't look for additional projected intersections...

With that turned off, then the splitting and Network will work to generate the shape that I have attached here as braun_2.zip .

Let me know if that result works for you.

Otherwise to get a more accurate and kind of higher quality result would really require building it up in more strategic pieces at a time which are filleted together, instead of trying to surface the entire object all in one go.

Doing it in more segmented pieces lets you get a lot more control over each individual piece, but it will also require quite a few more shaping curves to be drawn and take quite a bit more time to do.

- Michael

hi michael,

thanks a lot ... this is great ... now i'm looking to understand what you've done ;)

many thanks again
oliver

Hi oliver, step-by-step goes like this.

First, I opened up your braun_1.3dm file, and selected these 2 long curves:



Next I ran the Edit / Trim command. This brings up a prompt like this:



In this particular case, you need to uncheck that "Project intersections" option, or else things will get cut up into more pieces than we want in this situation. So uncheck that and then push "Done". By pushing Done here without selecting anything else it indicates to MoI that you want to trim each of these objects with the other. Under other more typical uses of Trim you would at this point select an additional object to cut the selected ones with.

Then the next stage of Trim shows a prompt that says "Select pieces to remove or push Done to keep all" - push Done here again to indicate you want to keep all the pieces instead of removing any sections.

At the end of all that, your 2 longer curves are now split up into 4 halves. This now makes a type of arrangement that can work with Network surface. Imagine those 4 halves touching each other at a kind of "pole" area. With this arrangement you could imagine that those curves could be arranged flattened out similar to a map of the world, with those "pole" areas corresponding to the North and South poles on an actual map of the real world. Without the curves trimmed up, MoI was not able to figure out how to arrange the curves into a 2D type layout like a flattened map, Network surface needs this kind of layout to work.

To do the network is really easy - just select all 5 curves (those 4 "half" curves created by Trim, and also your middle ellipse piece) and run Construct / Network, and that makes the surface that I posted.

Hope this helps explain it!

- Michael