Can someone tell me if there’s a way to make this elliptical hole array along this complex surface edge?
See attached.
I tried it but it failed to execute.
_WorkSurf-Flanges-1a.3dm (207.2 KB)
Exactly!
Please tell …
Hi Chris - not all that obvious:
- ShrinkTrimmedSrf, Explode, UntrimBorder the ribbon.
- MergeSrf, Smooth=No until its all one. Do all this to a copy if you want to leave the orginal intact.
- OrientOnSrf > OnSurface > Pick the surface.
- First reference point - pick the marker at the edge
- Second reference point pick the marker at the center.
- In the dialog, set scale at 1, and rotation (I found) at 180.
- At the command line set Copy=Yes.
- Click click click at very marker point.
-Pascal
How the heck did you know how to do THAT??
I NEVER in my life would’a figured THAT out!
I’m still not sure how it works until I try it myself and compare it w/what I used as flat patterns in my model.
Will get back to you as soon as I do.
Thanx!
Why did you have to use ShrinkTrimmedSurface on the flight surface?
Why can’t you just pick the ellipse, then pick the complex curve (made from the i.s. edge of the surface), and then pick the surface?
In other words, what is going wrong, that ArrayCrvOnSurface refused to work on this ellipse + edge + surface?
Also, when I use ShrinkTrimmedSurface on my original flight surface, the command gives this message, “All surfaces are already shrunk”. What does that mean?
Did you use UntrimBorder to see if the ShrinkTrimmedSurface worked right? Not sure why you used that command. Please explain.
OK, when using MergeSurf, it won’t connect trimmed edges. Maybe that’s why you used UntrimBorder? In that case, why did my choice of commands fail to work? Since the adjoining edges were not touching and were also slightly different lengths, I trimmed them back a ways and then used BlendSurf + Join. What makes Join unsatisfactory compared to MergeSurf?
Are curve and surface qualifications required in order for ArrayCrvOnSurf to work right? If so, where can I read about what they are and how to accomplish them? I didn’t see them in the Command Reference.
The more I apply the command sequence you used, the more questions I have.
Thanx …
Hi Chris -
There is nothing wrong with what you had - but it was inconvenient for OrientOnSrf not to have all the faces merged into a single surface.
The flight is a polysurface - that is fine, but I wanted to use OrientOnSrf and since the source object was already in place on one of the faces of the polysurface, it all had to be one surface in order to use the OnSurface option and have it work out. An alternative would be to place the ellipse and the markers in the CPLane and use OrientOnSrf multiple times from that object, once for each face in the polysurface that gets at least one ellipse.
So, in order to merge all the surfaces. they had to have untrimmed edges that are within tolerance. Shrinking and untrimming makes the chances of this being successful greatest, though it appears that the faces were already shrunk, so that bit did not matter in this case.
UntrimBorder was to get the exploded faces untrimmed so they could be merged.
-Pascal
Thanx, Pascal, for taking the time. I’m sure you’re a busy man fielding all the challenges in here!
I’m ‘bound and determined’ to do it your way, so let me try again and get back to you.
Meanwhile, can you tell me why my use of ArrayCrvOnSurf didn’t make the array?
Thanx … Chris
Thanx Pascal.
I had to work hard at learning how to use OrientOnSurf, but finally figured it out.
Think I figured out answers to my other questions.
Thanx for all the help!
… Chris
I’m not sure - I did get it to work and I saw it not work as well, and I’m not sure yet what the difference is. But - this will orient the ellipses correctly only if the source is in the CPlane and not already on the surface.
-Pascal