Best way to model an odd shaped physical object?

Personally I'd use something other than SW to do it like Rhino which is actually made for stuff like that.

Short of that, the parallel plane bit will only get you so far, because at some point you will need to cap off the ends without making them look like caps. Ed Eaton several years back made a simple model called "putty ball" or something like that with splines on perpendicular planes where the splines all met at a central axis and then did a closed loft. This approach would work for something fairly simple like the dreaded "amorphous blob", but if the part has any detail, you will need to combine with other techniques.

If you can identify faces or areas you can create using a particular technique, that might be the best place to start. For example, sketch out the part or mark up on your physical lump of clay faces that you think you can create using lofts. Don't try to build the whole thing in one whack. Don't be afraid to overbuild to get the right face shape and then trim back to get the right boundary. This can be difficult if you don't have any identifiable edges.

There is no "easy button" for things like this, and SW isn't particularly well suited to it.

matt

James.

Go to

and downdload the Scooby Doo model. It was done 100% with surfacing, and will give you some ideas.

Regards

Mark

The problem is that most of the commands are built to create as smooth a surface as possible. I have had good luck working with photographic references. A lot of other progs are more suited to this task.

Possibly: Photograph the model from a Lazy Susan style pedestal and overlay all those images on the Front Plane (or plane normal to camera view), and trace the outlines with splines on construction planes corresponding to the angle at which the photograph was taken. Then loft

If you are not particular about the shape use a fill surface or two with 4 or 5 constraint curves. That should be enough to wig the algorithm into creating a very rough surface

Hi James,

have a look at:

There is a free available demo. The use of this software seems to be very clay-like (check tutorial videos)

Also have a look at the thread "CosmicBlob for kids" Ther are already some SW users who made experiences with this software.

Good luck

Jo

"james" schrieb im Newsbeitrag news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

If SWX is your only available software in addition to the other suggestions you might start by searching for Ed Eaton's Curvy Stuff tutorials at Dimonte Group.

Here are some step-by-step tutorials for getting started.

Not necessarily the cheapest, but by far the easiest would be to send the clay blob out to a vendor with a digitizing arm and get a cloud of points back. Import that model into SW. Depending on what your neeeds are, you might be done at that point. If you need to refine the blob (perhaps for manufacturing reasons), you can then create individual surfaces that follow the contours of the imported blob. Doing it this way eliminates the annoying (and error prone) measurement step

A lower tech method that will also work (if you can destroy the blob to capture it): Put the blob onto a scanner and take an image. Slice away a section (.100" say), take another scan, repeat until the blob is gone. Import the images onto planes spaces at your slice distances, and trace the edges of each slice. You've now got a set of guide curves that you can use to make your model

On a side note, an outside service would probably opt to digitize it using a laser scanner instead of the point by point physical contact type of digitizing. I believe there are services that will even supply you with a solid model if you so choose. It would most likely be just an iges or step file without a feature tree.