My first post here, I am a beginner please excuse my ignorance if this questions sounds stupid
I am creating a 3D representation of my house
Above I have created a duct for my AC. There you can see two objects which I created the same way but they look different. They were created using “Follow me” ( I drew a circle and from that circle I drew a line toward where I wanted the duct to go) the second object (the one to the right) does not have a smooth surface and I don’t uderstand why
THe reason is because when you created the elbow, the disk was made of an exploded circle. When you made the straight tube, the disk was made from a Circle where the edge segments were welded and softened.
The fix is to open the Soften Edges dialog from the Window menu, select the elbow, and adjust the Angle slider.
Without knowing the details of the process you followed, I can’t say exactly what you might have done wrong. But, in any case, the second object has not been smoothed. Select it, right-click, and choose Soften/Smooth Edges. You may need to adjust the settings in the Soften Edges window to get the desired amount of smoothing.
It’s not a big deal. It just has to do with the way SU treats the endpoints between the edge segments on the outline of a profile you want to extrude.
If the outline consists of arcs, curves, or circles (as identified by Entity Info), the longitudinal edges between the faces of the resulting extrusion will be created as softened/smoothed, so you don’t see them. However, if the profile consists of individual edges butted end-to-end (again, you can check this in Entity Info), the longitudinal edges will be visible as lines. No matter, you can easily soften or unsoften edges any time you want.
To complete the picture insofar as your example, the Follow Me tool has the behavior of exploding the arcs, curves, and circles of a profile when it extrudes it, so the first time you extrude it there are no lines; the second time there are, and that’s your picture.
You should become familiar with the Soften/Smooth command/dialog and the use of the Eraser tool to soften and unsoften edges either selectively or globally.
Thanks guys! Wow …that was quick! I will definitely stick around, I do realize that I have tons of things to learn.
Yes I think that indeed that was the problem. I tried to extend the already created tube and that did not work out well.
A related question is this: let’s say I want to extend (with a direction change) an existing tube initially created as explained in my initial post. Since it is not a good idea to use the Follow me tool again from the end that I want extended I am thinking about doing the same (use the follow me tool) from the opposite end of the line that I use as a guide for follow me
So one thing that I would like to learn is how to lock a tool (pen or rectangle or circle) to a specific plane. In my case that would be the circle tool locked to the plan that is perpendicular on the line indicated by the yellow arrow.
My intent would be to draw a circle in the horizontal plane at that point and to use Follow me toward the free end of my duct/pipe.
If there is a better way to do this please tell me about it
I think the point is, it really doesn’t matter. Softening edges is really too easy even to worry about. Sometimes I deliberately unsoften edges as I work and resoften them later.
Incidentally, if you construct the entire path first, you can just extrude the entire tube in one shot, so your concern doesn’t even arise.
Yes I do realize that it would be easier that way but I already drew a good bunch of these and now I am kind of reluctant to redo them from scratch. Besides this, sometimes you need to adjust because initially you did not know that it would have to go farther.
Thanks for the link, it does work with a circle, the tool changed the color but I don;t see that with the rectangle tool. Am I missing something ?
If you’ll notice, the Rectangle tool does not have a shape indicator as the Circle tool and Polygon tool do. Still, the method of orienting a drawn shape is the same.
Actually I did. How would I know that there is a problem with the rectangle tool (the article you linked is not very clear on that) It is just my poor choice of word above that might have led you to believe that I did not try it.
It is still tricky to draw at the desired depth of filed to say to, the method indicated by the article tells you how to change the orientation of your tool by changing your angle of view
