coming surfaces tips and tricks webcast

I agree with you Niel, some of these tools are nice to have, but they are not the core ID tools. From my point of view, surfaces are not really the problem, SW spines are. It is hard to build a robust house when the foundation wobbles all over the place.

I would also be interested to see what people would submit in advance - thats a good idea.

Daniel

I have used the flex function on occaision for different things, because it is at least predictable. I've never seen it do any rippling unless I do something silly with it.

The deform tool is a different issue, though. I would never use it to actually design a part, although I might use it to do a "looks like" model for a presentation or illustration.

I don't think either of these tools can replace real modeling. Also, don't confuse surfacing with "complex shapes". They aren't necessarily the same. A lot of surfaces are simple, and a lot of complex shapes are solids.

Two pennies worth:

Complex shapes are all made up of simple features, whether created by "solid" or "surface" tools. The cool thing about surface tools is that you are only concerned with the surface you are dealing with and it's boundary conditions. Solid creation features (which are nothing more than surface creation, boundary rep maintenance macros) often cause the need to consider what's happening with irrelevant surfaces that will be engulfed by the boundary rep and are often the reason for feature failures.

I think, to a large extent, that bend, warp, etc., tools are there because they are (1) relatively easy to program and will (2) WOW the uninitiated. Reminds me of the SW, IV "shoot out" a few years back where everyone (as reported in the "trade rags") went bug-eyed over the virtually useless ability to "stretch" primitives.

Intuitive, robust curve and surface creation, boundary condition (G1, 2) definition, etc. tools, extend, trim, offset (curves, surfaces and quilts; maintaning boundary conditions and not just surface normal offsets) that don't take an entire coffee break on a super-computer to solve along with a full compliment of analytical tools are the foundations of good surfacing software. These are things I'd be looking for, for what little it might be worth.

And I'd also be watching to make sure they (surfaces, surface features) are not being treated as second class citizens; Autodesk style; e.g. can they be copied, transformed, mirrored, patterned...

All, ... reading the webcast description again I guess it doesn't really say they want to discuss the limitations of the present tools...discuss challenges and techniques...time-saving tips...so maybe my initial enthusiasm is misplaced...slightly disappointing because I think designers are forced by the tools to do things the long hard way to get the geometric results they need/desire...does say real world design issues though....perhaps they will allow some discussion of where designers want to go with new capability. OK SW is a mid range program so it will probably always limp a bit for ID work but if continuity didn't matter to us then people wouldn't spend a lot of time fussing over it...it is relatively easy to construct and trim a suitable surface but getting it to blend sweetly with adjacent ones is the hard part....of course no one wants to spend a lot of time smoothing things out only to have to redo most of that if there is a slight design change to the overall shape that upsets things. As Daniel says the program's splines capability would seem to be the underlying limitation that users are tripping over in their work however after looking at SW using the deform tool I wonder if the people at the top have the same understanding about ID work as users. This webcast should be a good opportunity to promote the issues people have using SW for ID work as well as to learn how to be more competent with the basic tools.I hope a lot of people will tune in and maybe have a say... neil