VW won't clip surface

[Bruce Kieffer]

I have a G4 Mac running OSX 10.3.2 and VW 10.5.1. I'm trying to draw a piece of pegboard. I draw a 21-1/2" x31-1/2" rectangle, make a 21 x 31 grid of 1/4" dia. circles, and center the circle grid inside the rectangle. I ungroup the circle grid, select all the circles and the rectangle, then do a clip surface and all I get is spinning watch, then beachball. So is it true that this operation, which seems so simple to me, is just too complex for VW?

[Guest]

It shouldn't take too long for that operation, but like I suggested in the other post, you may want to try to run Disk Utility's First Aid and verify and repair disk permissions.

[Hunter B]

Do you have to clip each circle out of the modified rectangle?? Just a thought

[ionw]

I was curious about this as I use clip surface often. On my powerbook g4 1Ghz w/512Mb RAM it crashed VWA 10.5.1

on our PowerMac G5 dual 2Ghz w/ 2gb RAM this operation worked but it took 7 minutes and consumed over a Gb of RAM by the end of the operation.

Interestingly if I took the same array and instead used Combine Into Surface the operation succeeded on the powerbook and only took 10 or 15 seconds.

Oh yeah repaired permissions on both first Katie...

[alanmac]

Have you tried doing a section of holes at a time. I was doing some fretwork and it took ages. It may help to do this in 3D using the sbtract solids.

I've had problems on clipping and adding surface today. I wanted to create a rectangle but instead of having straight edges to each side I wanted curving from corner to corner, so I created and arc like a wedge of cheese, repeated and rotated it three times. Butted them together. When I selected them all and asked to add surface I got the old geometry error message. Adding one by one was fine until the fourth and final piece - error message again. Can also add surface to any two pieces together but when asking for these to add surface I get the same error message.

[Bruce Kieffer]

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Have you tried doing a section of holes at a time. I was doing some fretwork and it took ages. It may help to do this in 3D using the sbtract solids.

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I did try it in sections, but as I continued to clip the additional sections, VW got slower and slower. As I neared the end, VW just couldn't do the job. In other words, as the clipped object got more and more complex, VW slowed down until it just could not handle the task anymore.

[alanmac]

Can I ask why you want to clip the surface? Are you going to extrude this to create a 3D piece of pegboard. If not why bother with the clipping of surface, just group them together.

I know it's not ideal and you should be able to do it but at the end of the day its getting the job done. Mine slowed to a crawl and I went off and had lunch !!

I can understand this slowing down in 3D modeling because you can go back through the hidden groups to edit an object to the first addition/subtraction but if I'm correct this does not work on 2D objects when performing clipping etc. other than in "undos", limited by your specified number of undos and when you save or exit file.

[ionw]

Hey Bruce,

Did you see the part in my post about the Combine into surface? It will give you the same net result as what you are attempting with clip surface.

HTH

[Bruce Kieffer]

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Can I ask why you want to clip the surface? Are you going to extrude this to create a 3D piece of pegboard. If not why bother with the clipping of surface, just group them together.

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Yes, I want to create a piece of 3D pegboard. I want to see through the pegboard holes.

[Bruce Kieffer]

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Did you see the part in my post about the Combine into surface? It will give you the same net result as what you are attempting with clip surface.

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HTH,

Thanks for reminding me. I gave the combine into surface a try and it worked. Maybe Katie (or someone else) can give me a brief explanation of the differences between combine into surface and clip surface.

[Andrew Bell@NV]

quote:

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Originally posted by Bruce Kieffer:

Yes, I want to create a piece of 3D pegboard. I want to see through the pegboard holes.

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If you only need to see through it for rendering purposes, consider making a transparency texture map for the holes instead.