Solidworks Nurbs Editor

My email is:

swnurbs _AT_ plasmadevelopment.com

Sorry about that ;)

Pretty cool. And it is just a macro.

I tried it in 2004 and it seemed to work fine.

It is similar to some other SW functions in that you first have to create the surface and then you can play with it.

I don't know if it make sense, but it would be nice to be able to set tangency on the edges.

Hey Andrew,

Does it work on all versions of SW? 2003-2005? Send it anyway. Leave out the obvous part in my mail.

Andy

plasmaandrew wrote:

ok well initial impression seems good but

1) crashed SW shortly after I picked a cylindrical face and had a warning message about not being a...sorry didn't catch it...was trying multi body at the time 2) I think it needs 5 nurbs in either direction to be more useful for symmetrical changes. 3) I had to pull quite a long way out on the points ...didn't seem to made a lot of difference to the actual shape...needs some sort of scale factor?

will look some more... cheers neil

..not sure about 2003 but it works well on my 2004 sp5 and 2005 sp1.0ev.

I think he mentioned that in the README file under periodic surfaces.

Well, yes, it would be nice to have the ability to have more or fewer control points

and

to be able to group them and move them together

but

it is pretty cool just the way it is.

I noticed the same thing, but that is kind of the way it is with NURBS. This way it is not overly sensitive.

yep, crashes SW,.. it does not support periodic surfaces yet.

..

agreed,.. UV control, grouping and some way to control the magnitude/influence of the drag distance?

..

Andrew,

Looks like you're out of the guitar case business? You might remember me from a past life.

Anyway, Your macro works nicely. To quickly give some shape to a face, it's a nice tool, and at this point, the price is right.

This actually works a lot like a product called Shape Works by a company called BarenBoym

Their version costs money, and it has some handy directional drag handles at each control point, plus, you can change the number of control points on the fly.

Also, take a look at a newish SolidWorks product called Cosmic Blobs.

It might be cool if yours did a "replace face" function automatically so it felt more like you were working directly on the solid.

It would also be very cool if it could span multiple faces.

As always, some sort of curvature / tangency control at the edges would be nice

It's interesting that it won't work on cylindrical (periodic) faces as someone else pointed out, but it will work on spline based non- analytical surfaces.

Something I've been hoping for with tools like this is some sort of a "push" tool, like a thermoforming tool. Kind of like the "Indent" function in SW05. I know there's the Deform / Surface Push, but that isn't controllable, and it doesn't seem like it's possible to do anything which you could call "intentional".

Anyway, it's cool stuff, thanks for sharing it with us!

Matt Lombard

"plasmaandrew" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com:

integrated

P.

1) it wasn't mentioned in the readme in my email....but even so I would like just the warning and not the crash which came immediately afterward. 2) specifically I was wishing for an odd number of points so that one fell on the mid point of a surface. 3) it is good but it would be even cooler if some small changes were made e.g. it wasn't an issue of being overly sensitive it was about the movement being more reflective of the actual result.

I hope Andrew appreciates that we really like what he has done and we are offering suggestions for its improvement.

cheers neil

Thanks everyone for the interest and kind words. This macro is still a baby, so i will try to include the wish list in the next release. If I compile it, then i will probably implement some openGL to run the points instead of the windows GDI. The point distance issue is just a fact of life when it comes to b-spline surfaces, however, I will look into weighting the points to have more or less of an effect on the shape. Also, im looking at creating a "preview surface" so you can see what the surface will look like without commiting changes. Keep it up! _andrew_

One thing about NURBS is that the control points are not usually on the surface or anywhere near it. There are ways to generate control points from information on where the surface is or should be, but that takes more programming.

For this kind of application I use Rhino as the benchmark for the user interface since I know a little Rhino and a lot of other people are familiar with it, i.e., the learning curve will be shorter.

In production we have to be careful of the fact that the surfaces will not regenerate if they are opened on a seat of SW that does not have this macro installed. I would assume that this is not true if the model is exported to a dumb geometry format like parasolid.

Still waiting for my copy.

"Preview surface" is likely within the ability of SW API. Look up "temporary bodies" in the SW API help.

If you would like a hand turning this into an addin, drop me a line at rol[3+1}_AT_LiquidSchwarz.com (do the math & remove the brackets) I can also be contacet via .

Hmmmm, I wonder if SW corp could have been any less descriptive when it came to periodic nurbs in the API... The macro now supports periodic surfaces in any and all directions (you can now edit doughnuts!!) I also fixed that variable edge problem emailed to me by Paul. To those still waiting to get your copy, I apologize for the delay, I will be posting it on my website so you may download it soon. Thanks guys!

_andrew_