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Deform Tool—Deform to Nurbs Curve, and Surfaces


Diamond

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Hi,

I would like the Deform tool to be able to go one step further. Whilst it is great to be able to deform objects around a radius (for example, to create a complex facade to a radiused building), this does not appear to cater for more complex deform shapes (like an oval). I request that the Deform tool (or another tool if it is not appropriate in the Deform tool) could deform objects to:

1. A NURBS path.

2. A NURBS surface, or 3D polygon, so that we have true object to surface wrapping.

Unlike the current process, which is not true wrapping, which requires extruding an elevation onto a 3D shape, extracting the intersecting surface, then lofting the extracted surface into a solid.

Or the drape surface command that only drapes in a vertical axis, not actually deforming, and wrapping the shape onto another surface.

Thanks.

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This Bend tool is a good start. I'm really glad to see it. One great feature is that the bent object retains same surface area as unbent version.

But this first iteration of the tool seems a bit clumsy to work with.

Maybe we need a deform command as well as a tool?

Diamond explain your idea a bit more.

Do you envision a process of drawing a path or surface then pushing it against the bend object or squeezing them together? sort of creating a last or form and using drag or move to press against the bend object.

Or another way would be a process for selecting a form/last/path object and the bend object then running a command similar to EAP. This one would need steps to determine the contact point and bend plane similar to current tool's protractor.

Result of either process is the target conforms to shape of path or form.

I'm +1 for all that

-B

Edited by Benson Shaw
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Hi Benson,

I also think the Deform tool is a huge step forward. Having it, would have saved me days on a recent project. Maybe what I am discussing should be a command, but I leave that to the interface designers at NV.

I am thinking you would; draw a path; and then deform a 3D object to path. The start of the path defines the start of the deform, and the the origin (start and finish points may need to be selected) of the 3D object is deformed precisely to the path. As it would be a NURBS path, the 3D object would be able to be able to be deformed in all 3 axis.

Maybe a similar process could be used for a 'Deform to Surface' command.

Kevin,

Yes, scaling, and distortion would be great. Even better, apply geometry through an applied image, kind of like a texture bump layer. You could create crazy 3D models through 2D graphics, applied to surfaces.

You say that you think for #2, we can do this already. How so?

Thank you to you both.

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

"Deform To >" makes a lot of sense. I can see a clean UI implementation of letting a user pick an object to be deformed, pick the object for it to be deformed to, then select the points on the one to be deformed against the other.

With path-based objects like NURBS curves it would be relatively simple, but I'm going to see how its handled in a few other 3D modeling apps when it comes to mapping solids to surfaces as far as the UI is concerned, I will submit a request shortly.

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Hi Jim,

A couple more requests on this tool;

1. On the Menu command version of this tool, it would be great to be able to duplicate objects and scale them along a path or a surface. Or is this getting too close to the surface array tool? Maybe they could be combined. I leave that to you to work out what is the best in usability terms.

2. The Deform Tool does not seem to respect enclosed classes within an object—but creates the deformed object in the enclosed class? Is there a way to do this? Is this a bug?

P.S. Am trying to use the deform tool on a complex facade at the moment, and it is very slow. Any way to speed this up? Also it would be good to have a status bar to show how far along the computation is along—so that I know it hasn't hung.

P.P.S. To get around the limitations of not be able to select and deform multiple materialed objects, I am deforming symbols.

Thanks.

Edited by Diamond
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

1) Duplicate Along Surface is sort of what Surface Array is intended for, but it has a lot of limitations and a simpler command that did this might be warranted. Submitting request now.

2) I hadn't done any testing with deforming container objects, I had only used it on raw 3D geometry. I'll test it here, I would expect that if they end result objects are still separate that they would keep their classes, but if it combines them into one object I would expect it to take on the overall class of the symbol.

I have asked for a similar progress bar, apparently they tried it and its not really useful. It does not know how long an operation will take before it finishes, so you would just get a bar that snapped to 50% and then sit there for 45 seconds, jump to 90, sit there for a minute and then take 2 minutes to complete.

Unlike file copy operations, where the OS can see how large the file is, how long it took to transfer a percentage of the overall size then do the math on the remaining time from there, a Deform operation is of an unknown difficulty until it completes.

I have indeed asked for them to speed up all solids operations though, especially Surface Array ;)

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