Please critique

[pdwalsh59]

Please critique

Hello everyone,
I am very much a noob but I am finding C3D extremely easy to learn and use. I have set myself a task to model a motorcycle engine. I am at the point where I am doing the fins with cutouts. I did the cutout by using the scalpel tool and then deleting ploys on the modelled upper face of the fin. Then mirror and bridge to give both upper and lower. Then inner extrude the edge of the cut and manually clean up around the cut. The manual clean up is quite labour intensive and I have a number of fins to do! Any comments or criticisms would be welcomed - especially any tips.

Thank you and regards,
Paul

 

[pdwalsh59]

PS - I do realise I have misplaced the hole for the cam drive. I was so intent on the cut out, and this is about the 4th or 5th attempt, that the hole position migrated with my frustration.

 

[hyperion]

Ambitious. No criticism but a suggestion. if the fins are identical. Once you get one fin the way you what it, just use copy and paste and drag to create the rest. You can make the copies children of the first and import children to reduce to one mesh if you want. Of course place them correctly first. You might also be able to use an array instead of copy paste. One of our resident specialist will have the answer for you I'm sure.

hyperion

 

[pdwalsh59]

Thank You, The fins do get smaller as we go down and the cam drive hole remains the same size, and placement and then changes to a relief on the lower 3. You have given me an idea, something to try on fins that are alike - top two, middle 3 and then lower 3. Making each group one mesh of duplicated fins and then using taper may speed up the process.
I may never finish this but I treat it as a learning exercise - learn how become intuitively efficient.

Regards
paul

 

[Pat88]

Hi Paul

I would say you've made a fine job of a tricky subject, keep up the good work :icon_thumbup:

Cheers, Pat

Thank You, The fins do get smaller as we go down and the cam drive hole remains the same size...

Aaah, if you taper the 3 fins you'll taper the hole. Maybe try this, split the hole from the fin, put one copy of each up and down, scale the width/length of each of the upper and lower fins a bit, but not the hole, then import the rings as children and bridge to complete. Should give you a consistent hole size. Hope this helps

 

[podperson]

To create an evenly spaced set of identical objects, use an array, not copy/paste.

Very very good stuff. Careful use of beveling may help.

From top to bottom:

1. inner extrude
2. bevel (level == 1)
3. bevel (level == 2 -- the default)
4. original object (8-sided cylinder)

I've attached the example file if this helps.

 

[pdwalsh59]

Thanks all for the replies and help. I will certainly look into the suggested techniques. I find this forum provides tremendous support for us noobs - thank you!!

Regards
Paul

 

[pdwalsh59]

Here is the file that contains the primitives for some hex head style fasteners.
Kind Regards
Paul

 

[Pat88]

Hi Paul

Great job :icon_thumbup: it's all coming along very nicely I'd say.

There are some really good tips by Frank and Zoohead on hex nuts.

For the edges of the hex nut I used the magnet tool when making the back end of the torch model as it gave lots of options to pick from, hope this is helpful.

Cheers, Pat

 

[pdwalsh59]

Something like this earlier experiment.

 

[uncle808us]

Hi Paul

Great job :icon_thumbup: it's all coming along very nicely I'd say.

There are some really good tips by Frank and Zoohead on hex nuts.

For the edges of the hex nut I used the magnet tool when making the back end of the torch model as it gave lots of options to pick from, hope this is helpful.

Cheers, Pat

Here's a quick nut using a 32 sided cylinder.

 

[uncle808us]

You can check your circle by over laying a circle spline in front of your circle and bring your vertices (points) into place.

 

[Pat88]

Cylinder Fins

Hi Paul

Hope your project continues to progress well, it's been an interesting one to follow so far. :icon_thumbup:

The problem you posed of how to get regular fins on a cylinder was one that has been puzzling me ever since you first raised it.

Finally figured it out using the method suggested by Zoohead in his boat building tutorial (well worth doing). May be too late to be of much use to you on this one though.

By using a blueprint of a circle with sections and a cube with the matching number of sections (also added a couple more ring cuts top and bottom to smooth out the shape) here's where I got to.

Hope to see more of your machine-work soon.

Pat

 

[podperson]

fins from a cylinder is very easy assuming it doesn't need to seamlessly hook up to anything. Draw the cross-section in a vector program, import, extrude.

(I used iDraw for the SVG artwork. It's currently my favorite — bar none — vector drawing program.)

 

[Pat88]

fins from a cylinder is very easy assuming it doesn't need to seamlessly hook up to anything. Draw the cross-section in a vector program, import, extrude.

(I used iDraw for the SVG artwork. It's currently my favorite — bar none — vector drawing program.)

Hi Tonio, I think building it into something was kind of the point here really, obviously I could just have imported the original (edited) vector diagram, but I can't see much use for a standalone finned cylinder in practical terms

Cheers, Pat

 

[podperson]

Hi Tonio, I think building it into something was kind of the point here really, obviously I could just have imported the original (edited) vector diagram, but I can't see much use for a standalone finned cylinder in practical terms

I'm confused. How is the way you've built it going to be easier to build into a larger model? Either way we've got a chunk of geometry that "doesn't play well with others" (actually, if you mostly build with creators and splines, the approach I've taken would work well but C3D's spline-manipulation tools would probably make that pretty unpleasant).

If I were building this engine I'd probably just do it in MoI or something similar.

 

[Pat88]

Sorry Tonio you've lost me on this one, is your contention that by scaling some aspects of a regular cube, adding a couple of ring cuts and using cover to pull out a few fins whilst maintaining a regular geometry magically destroys the ability of the original cube to interact with other objects???

I can't see how it cannot interact with any other object in more or less that same way that a cube could, or could not, do in the first place.

This was just an idea on a way to get regular fins onto a cylinder, maybe you mean the rest of the model has geometry that's not compatible… well I agree in that case.

Happily I'm not the one trying to build the engine.

Many thanks for your input, I'm always willing to learn, Pat