Thicken?

Hi,

Apologies if there is an obvious answer to this question, but I'm coming from another 3D package and am struggling to adapt.

Essentially, I have a simple model of a bent bit of metal which is 3mm thick.  Now I want it to be 5mm thick.  I exploded the closed polysurfaces of my model and offset the inner  curved surfaces by 5mm to create 3 new, closed polysurfaces, then I boolean joined them together before deleting the leftover open surfaces.

Is this a way to do this involving less steps?

Thanks,

Nick

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Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on December 21, 2012 at 8:22am

Hi Nick- in V5, start from  one set of surfaces, joined, and OffsetSrf with Solid=Yes to 5 mm. In V4 it is considerably more work... Feel free to post what you have and I'll take a look.

-Pascal

pascal@mcneel.com

Permalink Reply by Helvetosaur on December 21, 2012 at 8:39am

Yes, just make sure it rhymes...  ----H

Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on December 21, 2012 at 8:46am

I... I.. don't know what you are talking about! (I've found one good thing about these forums at least)

-Pascal

pascal@mcneel.com

Permalink Reply by Helvetosaur on December 21, 2012 at 9:38am

Hey, that's not fair...  No editing of your poets...

Permalink Reply by Nick Davies on January 9, 2013 at 2:42am

Thanks for the reply - I did read it before Christmas but then, what with all the turkey and so on...

I'm coming from FormZ 7.0 which, although it has some GUI problems, (disappearing palettes, workspace anomalies etc.), allows me to work quickly. I need to adapt and it's hard to shake off old habits.  What I'm trying to do is thicken a solid by selecting a surface on that solid and then offsetting it without having to explode the solid first.  The offset surface command works exactly as I want it, creating a solid from the result, but selecting the surface(s) to offset is proving a challenge

Is it possible to select a single or multiple surfaces of a solid on which to perform an operation without having to explode that solid first?

Attached is a model, (imported), of an object with a thickness of 5mm.  I need to increase the thickness to 7mm by adding 2mm on the outer surface.  What I instinctively want to do is select those surfaces, offset them creating a solid at the same time, then boolean join them to the original solid. 

What I end up doing is some variation on exploding the solid, selecting surfaces and joining them, deleting the rest and then offsetting what's left to 7mm.  This model is relatively simple and destroying my solid to create a new one is not always possible.

How would you do it?

Nick

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Permalink Reply by Nick Davies on January 18, 2013 at 3:59am

Bump

Permalink Reply by Pascal Golay on January 18, 2013 at 8:03am

Hi Nick- extracting the outer faces, joining, and re-offsetting is the procedure. If you are feeling adventurous, I can send you a test plug-in (V5 only) for extracting tangent, connected faces on a polysurface into a new joined polysurface, that should help speed things up considerably.

-Pascal

pascal@mcneel.com

Permalink Reply by Nick Davies on January 22, 2013 at 12:13am

Hi Pascal,

Yes, please do send me the plug-in.

I work about 50% of the time with sheet ply, (and other materials), which are cut and routed by cnc before being assembled to make mostly cabins. The model I sent you earlier is a steel piece which would be part of a base frame for one of my designs.
I am constantly picking and moving the surfaces where two solids meet as I adjust the way the sheet, once cut, slots together.  Anything that helps me speed up this process is welcome.

Nick

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