Hi! I’m trying to create a particularly complex shape, specifically a fuselage shaped like a raptor (bird), but I’m having quite a bit of trouble with the beak. Follow me didn’t work for the body so I had to manually go through and create all of the trapezoids as shown below:
But I can’t figure out how to make the beak. So what I’m trying to do is take the circle created manually at the tip of the beak (as shown in the image) and run that along the lines shown, into the larger circle which is the end of the body. Any help would be very much appreciated!
A little fiddly with just native tools but doable. You only use Follow Me for the body of the bird ,up to the neck. When the bodies made PushPull a short section out. Select the face and edges of the new section and use the Scale Tool to adjust the size as need. Keeping the face and edges of the new section selected use the Rotate tool aligned to the centerline of the selected face to start making the curve. Lastly use the Move tool to adjust the face up & down, left or right to suit you. Just keep adding small sections and adjusting until you get what you like. When finished you’ll need to soften & smooth the new geometry with the eraser tool. Posting image of a quick and dirty example.
Would it work if I measured the difference in length between each “segment” diameters and used that for scaling and then rotated and moved the segment into the desired, marked position?
Ken, if you have a spot in the neck area of the bird where you can trim things back to have a flat face for push pull to work, you should be able to work things out like I’ve shown. Not familiar with the web version of SU, but I assume you have a measurement box in the lower corner of the window? That’s where you can type in the values when scaling. Is the profile image of the bird in a separate group from the bird body ? When scaling and moving things about I’d just eyeball it to the profile. Almost forgot… when you do the push pull probably is best to keep it the same for all the segments . They will change when moving things about.
There is the measurement box but it can’t be selected or anything, it can’t be interacted with. The profile of the bird (assuming you mean the 2D shape I intend it to follow) is not a separate group. Thanks a lot for the help!
Ken ,don’t feel like I’ve been much help . Asked about the 2D profile being a separate group because if it was the body geometry won’t stick to it when your moving things around. It would allow you to use it as an unchanging visual reference. It’s a pretty challenging shape to be creating with just native tools. Also you shouldn’t need to click into the measurement box. When you grab a handle on the scale tool and start to move it you should be able to just type in the scale value and hit enter.
I never knew that! Thanks!! Would be very useful when deconstructing a cylinder into a flat face, by taking the circumference in 0.000000mm and using that for length…
Hope my “hack” got your bird finished without having to start over. Here’s the way I would probably use if starting from scratch and not using any plugins. When you draw the arcs they can be scaled as needed to give the desired side to side shape. In the example I just made them all half circles.
. Asked about the 2D profile being a separate group because if it was the body geometry won’t stick to it when your moving things around. It would allow you to use it as an unchanging visual reference. It’s a pretty challenging shape to be creating with just native tools. Also you shouldn’t need to click into the measurement box. When you grab a handle on the scale tool and start to move it you should be able to just type in the scale value and hit enter.