Hope you are all well, I’m looking for help on a scale model project, I have a scale wheel I want to remake in my resin printer, as the tyre came with the model is rubber and not very clean. but any way that’s by the by. the issue I am having is creating the geometry for the tread pattern. the tyre has a bulge from the top of the tyre wall (3mm tyre wall), which I can make fine, with follow me tool. the tread pattern goes across the (well) grain which I am struggling with. tried all sorts, from follow me tool, to creating segments without any luck, I have included some photos. hope you guys can help. dimensions Outer R-14.5 mm Tyre wall 3mm inner R-8.75 thickness 7mm. the tread spacing is 2.5mm and the tread recess is around .2mm x .5mm wide
thanks for you time reading, any help would be amazing thankyou.
Think of the volume of space cut out fof the tire for the tread. Model that volume in place around the tire. Use Intersect Faces to intersect it with the tire and erase what isn’t the groove. I would model a segment of the tire with a single groove and then use Rotate/Copy to model the rest. And, if the tire is symmetrical left to right, only model half and do a copy/flip to make the other half.
Due to the tiny size I would model with units set to meters and treat millimeters as meters. No need to scale the model down to millimeters before exporting the .stl.
It could look something like this. Model the groove the way you want it. I didn’t model the parting line around the tire but you could model the groove volume to simulate that.
A segment of the tire and the groove volume modeled.
BTW, you mentioned the distance between tread grooves. Instead of using that dimension, count the number of grooves. Use that number as a guide. I made 24 grooves. I used 96 sides for the circle for the Follow Me path and cut out a 15° sector (1/24 of the circle.)
Modeling as large as I did allowed for the use of the 96 sides and avoids the tiny faces issue.
