I am trying to use the paneling tools to apply a shape across a group of points that I already have. I derived the points from the intersection of contours since I couldn’t get the paneling tools to create a grid without some distortion. There should be a way to convert these points to paneling points, but I can’t figure it out. I tried generating another grid and matching the object properties but that still didn’t work. This is the error I am getting:
Error: no valid curves or points selectedCommand: _ptPanelGridCustom
Hi,
I noticed a couple things in your model:
1- When creating the grid from surface, it follows your underlying surface and create bigger grid (with is generally useful). Most paneling commands are capable of trimming back to the trimmed surface if selected.
2- If you have contours, you can generate the paneling grid for either one direction curves (ptGridUCurves), or two sets of curves through their intersections (ptGriUVCurves).
3- ptPanelGridCustom is used when paneling with custom pattern and use a model that is curves or points (this why you got an error using a surface module.
4- ptOrientToGrid, or ptPanelGrid3dCustom take module of any geometry (mesh modules are the fastest to map)
5- If you need simple box panels, then ptPanelGrid with Faces output might suffice.
I hope this helps.
Hello, thanks for the response! Unfortunately I still could not get this to work. No matter what paneling tool command I use, I always get this error: “selected points are not a paneling grid”.
I have the points I want to use. The commands will not let me panel across without giving me an error.
I also could not find a way to trim back the points to the trimmed surface with the standard paneling command.
You need to create the paneling grid with PanelingTools ptGrid* command. Points created are grouped, but each individual point has an object name that contains 2 numbers representing u,v indexes. PanelingTools paneling commands parse these each point indexes and recomposes the grid to then panel. Regular points created in Rhino, with no indexes, cannot be paneled. Please refer to the PanelingTools manual for details. I hope this helps.
Thanks for the response. I have spent weeks looking at the PanelingTools manual and I still do not understand how to derive panels–much less a grid–from this shape. Any ptGrid command I use on this shape throws the points out in a disorganized fashion. The ptGrid commands do not place points on this surface like I need it to, therefore I cannot generate panels on the surface properly.
I suspect the point grid that I am generating comes from the other shape that I used to boolean and get my shape. To create my shape, I used a distorted torus and booleaned that into a cube. I still cannot find a way to trim these points back to the surface that I have. I do not see a trim option in any of my “Create Paneling Grid” commands, and I do not see anything about this in the PanelingTools manual.
Literally any other shape I use works for me, but this one is different. I have not been able to achieve anything resembling the figure on the right in the screenshot you provided. Could you please walk me through how you generated these panels? Thank you for your assistance.
Hi,
Your surface is a trim from a bigger underlying surface. PT surface commands such as ptGridSurfaceDomainNumber command follow the underlying the surface and produce more grid than the trimmed boundary. This can be useful to get full coverage when you panel and most PT panel commands trim panels back to the trimmed surface.
If you like to trim, you can use ptTrimGrid with “Outside” option, then panel with ptPanelGrid “AddFaces” option.
Here is the example that grid then panel your surface RhinoPaneling_RI.zip (1.0 MB)
