I have one month experience on Rhino and like it alot. My first foray in to modelling.
So I have been trying for last 8 days to Boolean join/difference a push button into the side of a cone…and fail at each try.
Ive tried a simple Boolean join, then extract curves to tweak them, but Boolean always fails. A Boolean Difference is I believe the answer, but after modelling a button and capping the end so its a solid…I still cant seem to get my concave button inserted cleanly into the face of the cone.
Ive projected a round curve onto the cone, then use the circle to cut into surface, but then cant get a concave surface from that edge onto the cone.
I want the button to be ‘sunken’ into the face of the cone.
So the cone maintains it shape everywhere except where the concave buttons are on each side. 2 buttons total
The button overhangs the sides of the cone. Do you want the sides to bulge around the button, or do you want the button to be smaller so that if fits into the cone?
Hello - just for future reference, if you ask for help, make your questions as clear as possible and provide accurate information - a sketch here would have saved a lot of back and forth - In short, don’t make the people who are trying to help do all the work - it ain’t nice, and you’ll get less useful help.
wwsteel7,
I don’t think that your are going to get an answer that says just do this and all will work. Partly because it is a little difficult to understand what it is you are attempting to accomplish. With that in mind here are some thoughts…
You could place the button where you want and “group” the two objects. That will keep them together as you work your drawing. Not as one polysurface but as a group.
Being new to rhino, I would encourage you to explore boolean union. One of the challenges with a failure message is that it does not tell you why it failed. It’s up to you to figure it out. If you take simple shapes, a square and a cylinder and noodle around with them I’ll bet you will discover a lot about boolean union. Does it work if they are solid? Does it work if they are not? How about if one is solid and one is not? Try to “join” them instead of “boolean union”. What the difference between those 2 commands? So just “noodle” around with simple shapes in an effort to learn.
You could place the button just where you want it, then use the intersect command to get a curve where the two intersect. You could then use that curve to trim both button and “cone”. The try to join them or boolean them.
Just some thoughts. I have been using Rhino for about 15 years and I do not know the commands all that great, but what I do know is how to “noodle” an issue. With a little bit of messing around you can get rhino to do about anything.
thanks for the tip, Ive been messing around with it for quite a while already.
I thought such a simple task of joining two objects would be a lot simpler…and at the very least a Pro would have a ready answer to provide. I’m wrong on both accounts.
cut a hole into the cone, it has to be bigger than a submerged concave surface. you can do that by either extracing an isocurve from the button like structure which is messed up actually, so rather take a circle place it orthogonal infront of the cone and use trim it will automatically project the circle onto the cone and make a hole. then place your concave surface inside of the hole a bit further in, which as pointed out has to be quite a bit smaller than the hole which is a key point in this to work nicely, then use blend surface.
not sure what I’m doing wrong…
Ive placed the curve in front of the cone as you said…used trim and it deletes the surrounding surface but leaves the area which should be a hole.
