How to bend a shape?

[MarcoH]

Imagine a piece of bendable plywood that has an irregular shape and has cut-outs, drill holes etc. Now this shape has to be bend in an arc as if you'd wrap it around a cylinder. How do I create the bending? I can't figure out how to get this done in VW. Is there a 'wrap around' command somewhere?

[grant_PD]

no

[Ray Libby]

Grant is correct. I would say you need to draw your bent shape first as an extrude, then do your cutouts. If you could post the file here it would help to figure out how to do it.

[J Lucas]

There is a drape surface command but that would only go 180 deg.

[MarcoH]

Grant is correct. I would say you need to draw your bent shape first as an extrude, then do your cutouts. If you could post the file here it would help to figure out how to do it.

I have thought of that, but in order to have every cutout deformed correctly in all three dimensions, It would take an enormous amount of calculating and constructing. Especially all the curved cutouts will be quite demanding. I think I'll try exporting the object to Blender, use the Curve Modifier and port it back to VW.

btw, thanks for your reply.

[Kevin McAllister]

I have done this by exporting to Rhino and back with good success. I used the IGES format for the exports.

This would be a great thing to add to Vectorworks.

Kevin

[bcd]

The 3d modeling tools all seem to work in cartesian coordinate space. It's surprising cylindrical or polar spaces are not supported. It would make resolving problems like this a breeze.

Edited June 14, 2010 by bcd

[michaelk]

It's possible. Not simple, but possible.

Start with a 2d shape. Clip surface to get the cut outs.

Convert it to a nurbs surface.

draw the cylinder to bend it around.

Select the nurbs surface. set the weight to something very small, set the u degree and v degree to as high as you need it - but low enough to be reasonable, set the move to vertex only (or u vertices or v vertices). set the axis constraint to something useful.

Click and drag the vertices. Or enter values in the OIP.

Then do a shell solid.

It takes a little trial and error, but it's not too bad. Certainly faster than exporting and importing back again.

[bcd]

Yes, this will work. But what work for a simple wrap.

Illustrator can wrap letters around a curve for decades - even Word could do it in the last century.

Why cant VW wrap a polygon around a cylinder. There was a lengthy discussion a while back about wrapping 3d text around a cylinder. This is easy stuff on the coding side - it's a sandy area in the sun to do it manually at the top end.