Defining surfaces and other new questions....

[Lucky1]

Thanks Lisa!

So basically, if I ever want to subdivide a segment, I always need to draw it as a separate piece in the first place.
There is no way to cut a line at a point and act only on one segment?

BTW, what is "Weld" and "Unweld"?

Wes

[lisa]

Oh no, sorry for any confusion--cutting it after the fact works very well, too.

Weld and unweld do as you might expect. Weld takes multiple vertices that are snapped to the same location, and welds them into a single vertex. Unweld does the opposite; it takes a shared vertex (i.e. the corner where several surfaces meet) and splits it into multiple vertices. This is one way you could cut a shape apart.

You can also use Surface > Cut Away Object to remove a chunk of a shape and make it into its own object. Finally, there's also a knife tool on the object menu that's sometimes handy for this purpose.

[Lucky1]

Thank you but I can't make them work on my example.

If I make an "L" with a Polyline of 3 points, it appears that I cannot
"unweld" the corner vertex since it was always only one vertex.
I can't make the other tools do it either. Can you elaborate using
my "L" example?

Thanks!
Wes

[Lucky1]

Originally Posted by Lucky1

If I make an "L" with a Polyline of 3 points, it appears that I cannot
"unweld" the corner vertex since it was always only one vertex.
I can't make the other tools do it either.

OK, so by the silence I will take it that once a line is drawn straight that curving only one segment of it isn't possible.
I should draw each segment separately to begin if I have any intention of curving it in the future.

Another question then if I may, once the whole piece/design is complete, and it's been given a surface,
how do I make the whole unit say 1/8" thick? Right now it's "paper thin".

Thanks!
Wes

[lisa]

Sorry for the slow reply. The big game developer's conference is in a few weeks, and I've been tearing my hair out.

The polyline "L" is kind of a special case, as AC3D sees it as a triangle. (Switch it to polygon mode, and you'll see what I mean.) So yes, draw each as its own object to start for that case. Most of the time you don't need to do that however.

To make your object have thickness, you'll want to select your shape and use the extrude button. AC3D will add thickness along whichever axis you drag once you click extrude.

Incidentally, once extruded you should be able to unweld that corner and curve it.

[Lucky1]

Thanks Lisa, and I understand your constraint.

I'm just wondering though, if my 'piece' is 20 or so panels, even if I go through and extrude each one,
how can I be sure they are all the exact same thickness? Eyeball it? There's no Global command? (If that's the right word)

I am looking at Rapid Prototyping and thickness is supposed to be very exact.

Thanks!
Wes

[lisa]

Couple of options there.

You can multi-select, and extrude them all at once if they are all facing the same direction.

Otherwise "extrude by distance" will extrude the surface by an exact value in the direction of the surface normal. This is probably what you want if you're looking for precise values. You can toggle normal display on and off on the 3D menu to know which direction the surface will be extruded. The normals are the little pink hairs that appear when display normal is on. They show which way the surface faces.

The extrude button is the third button on the top row in the sidebar. If you click that, your other extrude options should show up in the panel below. On a side note: Don't get this confused with the "sculpty extrude" button, I know there was some mix-up about that earlier. Sculpty extrude is a Second Life thing, as SL has some particular constraints beyond what the built-in extrude does. The standard extrude is much more powerful.

[Lucky1]

Great stuff again, thanks! I'll give that a try.

[Lucky1]

Now I feel like I've seen the answer to this before but I forget where.....

Suppose I draw a square using a 4 point polyline, then I guess I would use
the "create ordered surface" method to fill it in, how can I then take that area
and bow it in or out, making it either convex or concave?

And if I want to do that to a long rectangular area....anything else I should know?

Thanks!
Wes

[lisa]

Same way as you've been doing... split it into sections (or build it as sections) as need be, add a vertex in the middle of the edge, subdivide and curve, then re-join when you're done. Same basic method as your L-shape should do the trick, you've just got more edges.