What % of you start with surfacing first

We rarely touch it. Although I think they are very nice features that allow you to do many things that you couldn't with out them.

Never have used it here, but have often wondered if we were missing some opportunities.

WT

I nearly always use surfacing these days since all the shapes we do come from sketches and are inherently 'organic'. I find the surfacing tools pertty good these days, but you need to spend the time and learn them, plus there is always more than one way to do things, and it often takes several of those before you're happy! But you do maintain your familiar working environment, and the parametric functionality.

A few features that are making it better at the moment are 'surface fill'- which can be great, 'fit spline' - which will be great in 2004 when it maintains relationships, and the new guide-curve tangencies and previews in the surface loft commands.

just my few pence worth.....

Lee

I have never used surfaces. However being a Manufacturing engineer working on designing gages, fixtures and tooling I see the solids being the way to go. I have to be able to make my parts as quick and easy to make for my tool room.

That's my $.10 (inflation)

Al

I've never used it in a work environment. I use sheet metal functionality about 80% of the time, everything else is rather simple solid modeling.

Surface Surface Surface. there is no other way for me.

I rarely use surfaces for work. If I need to repair or create a model of a customer's part, then I might use surfaces.

Depends on the part. The cool outside shapes get started as surfaces. The clunky mechanical stuff on the inside gets built as solids. I probably build ten times as many parts from solids, but I bet that I spend well over half of my time, probably more than two-thirds, on the parts built from surfaces.

Jerry Steiger Tripod Data Systems

For work-related modeling - I hardly ever use surfaces. In fact I can only think of two or three parts I've needed surfaces on. But I do "play" with surfaces - just so I know what is out there.

Adam.

Chime . . .

Boring prismatic part here . . . surfacing not used even once in five years (ok maybe once or twice).

I generally resort to surfaces only when extremely bored . . .

BUT recently I found a GREAT use of surfaces in assemblies. I use the offset surface to create a visual boundary around a part feature - to see when other things in the assembly are geting too close - this is absolutely great for me - I love surfaces for that reason alone.

Industrial designers ? . . . you mean those artsy-farsty types that design all that unmanufacturable and expensive organic stuff . . . those people . . . they like the surfaces . . . My brother in an industral designer . . . and my wife too . . . help I'm surrounded . . .

At least I can still be king of something, so whenever we talk I bring up things like galvanic compatibility and simply smile at them as they page thru that damn pantone color guide trying to determine if hippie brown #4 is more cosmic than cyber blue #14 . . .

Surfaces - useful to many people more creative than I . . . ahhh its great to know too much about fasteners . . .

SMA

"Arthur Y-S" wrote in news:Xl%5b.6383$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrdny03.gnilink.net:

I use surfaces for probably 30% of my parts. I think I use them as frequently on prismatic parts as on complex shapes.

I use surfaces for "memory surfaces" (keeping a face intact when needed for an operation later when the face has been consumed).

I use them with the Split tool when a sketch won't do it.

The "Fill" tool in sw04 has a switch which allows you to merge it with the solid immediately, so it is in some respects no longer a strictly surface- based tool. very cool.

You can extend and shorten imported parts with extruded shapes by using a planar surface and the "replace face" function.

I use surfaces for molds whether the part is complex or simple.

For complex parts, I use surfaces when shapes have to be made face by face instead of all at once, like with solids.

Sometimes I make a feature that has most of what I want, but one little ugly spot. I cut out the uglies and use surfaces to patch it.

Sometimes its useful to use surfaces to create intersection curves. A complex sweep and a revolve can give you a curve that you can't get using a projected curve.

I use the edges of mirrored surfaces to work around the fact that you can't mirror curves.

I rarely build parts from the ground up using only surfaces, but it happens sometimes. In the end, surfaces are either workarounds for stuff you can't do with solids, or reference geometry used to create solids.

...ok, ONE time, I did make a surface to try to machine from, but it was a workaround for a sub-functional CAM program.

The reason to use applications like Rhino or Alias is to make shapes that are difficult or "impossible" to make in parametric, feature based apps like SW. Surfacing tools in SW are useful, but useful in a different way from the surfacing tools in Rhino and Alias.

matt.