How to create a spoon?

Hi all,

I was wondering, what is the best way to create a spoon in Rhino? I can create a flat spoon. I tried the flow command, but that doesn’t create a realistic looking spoon.

Thank you.

Hi Mivil- there are a few different ways to get at this - attached is one-

Cyan curves (simple, control point curves) detrmine the overall shape
Loft through the curves - I used History so that I could edit the curves and have the surface update.
Red curves shape the ends- BlendCrv for these and adjust to taste.
OffsetSrf to create a solid.

QuickSpoon.3dm (274.9 KB)
-Pascal

Hi

The only thing I would add to Pascal’s method is a 2 rail tangent sweep to the ends. Simply trimming the surface ends breaks the continuity flow of the surface. You can see it really easily when looking at the trimmed profile.

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Just a suggestion but… You could also build the spoon as a single surface. This avoids the issue of having to close off the ends.

Loft four 3D curves that describe the spoon front to back in plan and elevation. These curves will each be of the same degree and have same number of control points. Carefully set the points to get continuity at front and back and set points in each of the curves to create a good rectangular topology.

To make things easier the curves can start life in 2D and then be gradually pushed into shape. History works really nicely with this approach.

Hello, I’ve been trying the method with the rhino file attached but I can’t make the loft work at all. could someone please help me understand where I’m going wrong? This is revision for an exam where I’ll have to accurately model an unknown utensil in 3 hours so annoyingly, modelling a spoon has become quite an urgent need for me :stuck_out_tongue: I’m still new to this program so be kind to me! :slight_smile: I have added the file to dropbox and can be found here… https://www.dropbox.com/s/14wjbc3jymo38ae/spoon%20test.3dm?dl=0

Thank you!

Well, you can get pretty ‘close’ if you select the three curves and simply ‘loft’. The next step I would try would be offsetsrf.

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Ah! It suddenly worked that time! Each other time I Lofted it before only half of the bowl would loft. Any idea why that may have been? That offsetsrf has really made it look great! Thanks so much! However, I now have this problem… Any advice for how to make sure the surface as correct?

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Hi Kyrie - the problem is, mostly, that the curves do not match in structure - you can see this better if the view is in wireframe - see how the surface’s internal isocurves show that the surface is connecting very different parts of the curves together? Loft prefers that the inputs are all the same structure - in practical terms that often means all are edited copies on one original curve. You can sometimes get around it using the Rebuild options in Loft, in this case use a good number of points, I think, but you then run into the second problem, which is that the shapes of the curves are very different there where it gets messy and you still get some odd folding though much less. I I think I would make this shape, where the outline has quite a convoluted shape, by trimming a simpler surface to that shape.

The reason some of your attempts looked like half a spoon is that if you pre-select curves that meet at the ends, Rhino has no good way to sort the order - so you can force it by starting the command with no selection and then pick the curves in the order you like.

-Pascal

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Thank you for that Pascal. Thats really helped me understand where I was going wrong. I’ll attempt to try the “trimming” technique you suggested and see if that works better :slight_smile:

Thank you!

Here is another way to make a spoon:

  1. Extrude the red curve (both sides)
  2. join and Extrude the black curves (both sides)
  3. ChangeDegree on the surface from step 1 from 1X3 to 4X3
  4. turn on RecordHistory and trim the surface from
    step 1 with the surface from step 2.
  5. Hide the surface from step 2

Now turn on control points and edit to create the scoop of the spoon. Only a few contril points need to be moved. After you get the shape you want you
can use offsetSrf (loose=yes solid=yes) to finish the spoon

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