Hello everyone, this is my first time posting in here so I apologize if I am doing it in the wrong place or the wrong way. Best way to describe what I am doing is with pictures. The CAD guys send me over a file so I can make them a model in 3D.
My question is…Does anyone know how I would take those contour lines from the first picture and show them in the model like this last picture??
The people who made this one said they used Rhino and selected the contour lines and used the pipe command. That is all the info I got on from them.
Any ideas?
Definitely not patch. I usually just delete those lines and make the model but my boss was wondering if I can figure out how to stick the lines on the model like that last picture.
I’m not sure exactly what you mean. Many of us using Rhino refer to the 3D thing in the computer that shows on the screen as a “model”. On the other hand, your pictures look like your ultimate goal is a 3D printed physical model. So that raises the question: are you concerned with showing the contour lines on the screen display of the rhino model, or with having them embossed on the surface of your physical model (or both)? Also, I presume you just want the actual contour lines and not any of the other lines: edges, UV, etc.?
Another question: Is the CAD data you receive a 2D or 3D file?
if i understand correctly, the first picture has a meshed terrain on the right and curves on the left.
you could try something like this:
• vertically align the curves with the mesh (in top view, the curves should line up with their desired location on the mesh)
• use the Project command to drape the curves over the mesh
use the Pipe command on the resulting curves
use the Mesh command on the pipes
try one of the Mesh Boolean commands to get it into one mesh.
if the pipes are solid and the terrain is solid, MeshBooleanUnion might do it… that said, i almost never work with meshes so i don’t really know a good way to go about making multiple meshes into single ones… the part about getting the piped contours onto the mesh should work though.
Thanks everyone for all the responses! The curves already come aligned perfectly above the mesh, I just moved them to get a screen shot. I will give that a shot thanks Jeff!
Take a few mins to check out the curves you’ve been given, they may not be intersecting and could be bitty… This might end up causing a few headaches down the line.
I’d suggest joining the majority of them and either rebuilding or smooth/fair to tidy them up a bit. You’ll have issues with intersecting faces if the radius of the profile you use is greater than the radius of the curves. By that I mean, if you have a pipe with a radius of 1mm and you have a curve with radii smaller or equal to 1mm it will create intersecting geometry so when you mesh it you may get errors.
That said, as long as it’s a good mesh and when you run _Check it says it’s OK for .stl output but not good for boolean you’ll be OK for printing.
