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blowlamp  
#1 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 5:27:51 AM(UTC)
blowlamp

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I suggest that we have a facility to freely place control points onto surfaces.

After seeing a tutorial elsewhere on the web, my eyes have been opened and I can see how powerful it would be to be able to have these control points as and where they are necessary across a surface.

It think these control points could be mapped to a grid of previously drawn points, for accuracy of placement and simplicity of application. This would allow for easy editing as well as some interesting patterns to be had, such as radial and spiral layouts.

We have a superb manipulator in the Gripper, so much of the infrastructure is already present in our software to exploit this suggestion.



Martin.
macnavi  
#2 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 7:33:17 AM(UTC)
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What do you mean with "Control point"? We do already have 'Point' (Draw->Point), which allows you to put and move a point anywhere you want, to attach things to. But that is probably not what you mean.
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rockyroad_us  
#3 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 8:22:34 AM(UTC)
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Yeah Blow Lamp, what do you mean? I can put points anywhere and even on surfaces. As far as constraining them, I've not done it personally but I'm sure they can be.
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ZeroLengthCurve  
#4 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 10:24:21 AM(UTC)
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How about this as a suggestion? Please make it possible to have ViaCAD generate a surface around an imported mesh. While an imported mesh might really break down into a bazillion facets and vertices, a smoothened, averaged, very representative "moulded surface" would eradicate countless wasted minutes or hours mentally devising work arounds. All VCP has to do is interpolate the user steps necessary to create lines and curves and relevand surfaces and cuts or trims to generate a mathematically and visually better version of what a semi- or reasonably-skilled user might do. Imagine a foot, or hand, or sonar bulb or dome of a tanker or a naval vessel, or the front end of a Volkswagen, or semi simple objects.

If VCP could just pretend it is sculpting or casting moulds inside of or around a given shape, but first internally texts up to 5 shapes and suggests 3 iteratively so the user can interact to refine the shape, this would produce smooth objects and reduce a 450 faces object to maybe 24 and obviate all number of stitching, joining, and other manual, tedious steps.
ZeroLengthCurve  
#5 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 10:30:04 AM(UTC)
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In the past 2 days, i have been using the gripper, for my first time, regularly. I LIKE it. I played around with it whe it first came out, but at that time had no processes making it feel needed. Now, it is VERY useful for moving things and needing to know stuff is not going to jump to origin or snap to some point unrelated but in magnetic or visual distance.

Nice!
ZeroLengthCurve  
#6 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 10:49:38 AM(UTC)
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...ure=youtube_gdata_player

A video is worth a thousand words.

VCP and Shark should have similar functionality, to help clean up messy, unrefined imports. But, in order to not devalue the imported work compared to the source, the patch cleanup should have some deviation constraints, maybe with two options: clean up for modeling display/visual purposes, or clean up for downstream app compatibility purposes.
blowlamp  
#7 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 11:40:51 AM(UTC)
blowlamp

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I sort of brought this up in a different post, earlier this week, [URL="http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5470.1"]see here[/URL] for an example of its use.

You can see the surface control points arranged like a spider's web in the 6th photo onwards and how by moving them about it's possible to get some cool shapes quite easily.

We do have control points in ViaCAD/Shark, but they need beefing up a bit to make them more useful.


Martin.
zumer  
#8 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:32:08 PM(UTC)
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I've built something like that with Punch, it was the centre of a 1950's Lotus car wheel well-known as the "wobbly web" wheel. I created a series of circular profiles, which are functionally the same as that MoI example, and lofted them, which can be done inwards or outwards. The only issue that I had with Punch is that it won't close the circular profiles, using control point splines, with continuity, so it had to be done in halves. Using a web-like network is possible in Punch, sort-of like MoI, but it's painful, and counter-CAD, IMO. Only one spline was needed to be made, the others are scaled copies, which was easy. The last pic is the original wheel that I was modeling.
zumer attached the following image(s):
wheel web splines.PNG (36kb) downloaded 4 time(s).
wheel web profiles.PNG (157kb) downloaded 4 time(s).
Lotus_wobbly-web_wheel,_Lotus_33.PNG (391kb) downloaded 4 time(s).

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rockyroad_us  
#9 Posted : Saturday, October 20, 2012 9:34:26 PM(UTC)
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Zumer, I think you need a point to close the center hole if that's what you mean by closed circle. You can loaf between curves and a point apparently.
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zumer  
#10 Posted : Sunday, October 21, 2012 12:23:12 AM(UTC)
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I meant the continuity of a closed circular spline, not the surface.
zumer attached the following image(s):
interpolate and control point circles.PNG (19kb) downloaded 4 time(s).

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rockyroad_us  
#11 Posted : Sunday, October 21, 2012 10:15:24 AM(UTC)
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I see what you mean. The interpolate spline doesn't make perfect circles using the square as a guide.

I would have made a regular circle and converted it to bezier or to a spline.
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ZeroLengthCurve  
#12 Posted : Sunday, October 28, 2012 7:24:54 AM(UTC)
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Blowlamp, that tutotial is fantastic!

It is inspiring me to make designs of ship propellers and their blades. In 2011, i made some horribly ugly attempts in VCP 7Pro. No fault of VCP. I should have thought of moving control points of a disc, much like you did. But, i did not even thing of that. I went the painfully difficult path of trying to mimic naval architecture cross sections of blade roots, leading edges, trailing edges, hubs, and tips from sweeps and extrudes.

My props will not to on real ships, but i cannot afford professional tools used by real builders and naval architects. And, i do not want to bw in a licensing situation orrestricted situation where i have to charge people extra if i use a non-free model in my files. And, making my own will be good practice.
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