I am trying to create a model of a small plastic bracket from an existing piece. Most of it can be made from lines/rectangles/arcs that are coplanar, but one part of it is bounded by two surfaces that are curved and non-coplanar. Is it possible to create such a item? If so, how so?
I have attached the file, and I have labeled the two boundaries to try and make it clear. I want to fill in between the upper an lower boundaries and make the result solid.
Thanks,
Jake
iKlipSnapIn.skp (91.5 KB)
Hi eejake52!
I messed around a bit and was able to turn the model into 2 solids.
Step 1: Made the basic geometry into a solid (not the upper and lower boundries)
Step 2: Used the Weld plugin by Smustrad to make the upper and lower boundries into āspline curvesā Just select each set of connected edges with a 3click and use Weld to join them.
Step 3: Used the Curviloft plugin by fredo6: āCreate loft between sufaces based on spline curvesā
Step 4: (There is probably a better way and if anybody has a tip please let us know) I then just manually connected the upper and lower boundary lofts with edges and cleaned as necessary.
I attached a cleaned up version of what I think you were looking for.
I iKlipSnapIn 20150220.skp (122.3 KB)
Also! I turned the curviloft solid into a component because I copied it and scaled it up 100x to clean it up and get rid of that view clipping that was going on.
No extensions are needed.
-Gully
Another solution with Fredo6s Curviloft plugin. @Gully_Foyle solution is surely the much cleaner one in this caseā¦
iKlipSnapIn_cotty.zip (48.3 KB)
Gully_Foyle,
Your solution makes perfect sense; but how did you identify/extract the āfootprintā and āprofileā?
Jake
Oh, well, I just used an eyeballed approximation for demonstration purposes.
It should be a pretty straightforward job, however, to project the vertices of the curves onto a horzontal and vertical face, either manually or using an extension to automate the task.
I just assumed that you had constructed the curves and so probably already knew the shape of the top and side views. But if you wish, we can step through that in greater detail.
-Gully
It helps if you understand the underlying geometry that makes up the shapes.
Sketchup it made up of flat faces and edges, so to make a curve you join the dots so that faces can form.
Here I have used your model and simply drawn in the edges needed to form the faces, they can then be smoothed so they disappear. Plugins, and intersect are basically automating this stitching process.
And another approachiKlipSnapIn _mac1.skp (133.5 KB)