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Taper Solid Not Working


ford519

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You may want to simplify your geometry. It looks like you have combined multiple solid additions into a single solid addition.
Try creating the solid addition in one go instead of through multiple solid additions.

 

A quick test with a draft 3D somewhat simplified similar to yours did work for the deform-taper tool. I'll try to recreate your model sometime tomorrow to see if it would still work.

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2 hours ago, ford519 said:

I have modeled and converted to a solid addition, and when I try taper solid, the tool fails. Why?

 

I doubt that you'll ever get the Deform tool to work on your object as a whole. Remember that the taper mode is essentially scaling a face of a cube containing your object. Because the the understructure parts are so much smaller in scale than the base and treads, they are likely diminishing to zero and causing errors.

 

I was able to easily deform a solid addition composed of just the base and treads. By approaching the stringer a little differently I was also able to get that to deform. I think the problem areas are the points of your original stringers, some of the smaller dimension pieces and the cross bracing.

 

I've attached a version of the file.

 

Kevin

 

59fd0c63bb6ef_ScreenShot2017-11-03at5_37_40PM.png.0a56c8a97cb64251cd56afaf7ea32e2f.png

tapersolid_notworking KM.vwx

Edited by Kevin McAllister
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1 hour ago, Art V said:

You may want to simplify your geometry. It looks like you have combined multiple solid additions into a single solid addition.
Try creating the solid addition in one go instead of through multiple solid additions.

 

A quick test with a draft 3D somewhat simplified similar to yours did work for the deform-taper tool. I'll try to recreate your model sometime tomorrow to see if it would still work.

 

Thanks Art, please check out the file I uploaded. It contains my model with screenshots of exactly what I'm trying to achieve.

 

15 minutes ago, Kevin McAllister said:

 

I doubt that you'll ever get the Deform tool to work on your object as a whole. Remember that the taper mode is essentially scaling a face of a cube containing your object. Because the the understructure parts are so much smaller in scale than the base and treads, they are likely diminishing to zero and causing errors.

 

I was able to easily deform a solid addition composed of just the base and treads.

 

Kevin

 

 

Thanks Kevin. I understand what the tool is supposed to do. It just simply won't work on my model at all, regardless of how much I scale it. I've had it work on more complicated models, so I'm just confused.

If it were a problem with diminishing to zero or past that point, wouldn't it be better to have the tool follow through regardless? The tool produces a fairly drastic effect, after all, so wouldn't artifacts and odd geometry be often negligible, or rather, quite noticeable/fixable?

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After some more investigation, I suspect VW is generating a error during the Solid Addition process. Since the Solid Addition is not valid, there's no way the Deform Tool would be able to generate valid geometry.

Here's a screen shot from Rhino of the objects. From right to left - my deformed model, my altered geometry before deformation, your original geometry as individual extrudes (ungrouped solid addition) and a solid addition created from your original geometry. The pink lines are generated by a Rhino command "Show Edges" which shows any unjoined edges. The command was run on all the objects but only the Solid Addition is showing errors.

 

Kevin

 

59fd24ffc439c_ScreenShot2017-11-03at7_21_52PM.png.392ee92c8a5c5c54a97aa377b0645f7e.png

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2 hours ago, Kevin McAllister said:

After some more investigation, I suspect VW is generating a error during the Solid Addition process. Since the Solid Addition is not valid, there's no way the Deform Tool would be able to generate valid geometry.

Here's a screen shot from Rhino of the objects. From right to left - my deformed model, my altered geometry before deformation, your original geometry as individual extrudes (ungrouped solid addition) and a solid addition created from your original geometry. The pink lines are generated by a Rhino command "Show Edges" which shows any unjoined edges. The command was run on all the objects but only the Solid Addition is showing errors.

 

Kevin

 

59fd24ffc439c_ScreenShot2017-11-03at7_21_52PM.png.392ee92c8a5c5c54a97aa377b0645f7e.png

 

 

Very interesting. I'm not a Rhino user (although I literally just bought MOI3D a few hours ago), but does this analysis mean that the individual surfaces aren't connected? Is Rhino usually a good judge of Vectorworks surfaces/added solids? Is there a way to explain the issue in Vectorworks, so I can avoid/fix the issue in the future? Thanks for your help Kevin.

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7 hours ago, ford519 said:

Thanks Art, please check out the file I uploaded. It contains my model with screenshots of exactly what I'm trying to achieve.

I did look at the file you uploaded, hence my comment to simplify the geometry. Kevin already gave an explanation that I was thinking of too of some parts not probably  being suitable (e.g. too small or not connecting properly as Kevin said about the understructure), also there are solid additions within your overall solid addition. If possible it is preferred to keep the nesting of solid additions to a minimum.

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10 hours ago, ford519 said:

Very interesting. I'm not a Rhino user (although I literally just bought MOI3D a few hours ago), but does this analysis mean that the individual surfaces aren't connected? Is Rhino usually a good judge of Vectorworks surfaces/added solids? Is there a way to explain the issue in Vectorworks, so I can avoid/fix the issue in the future? Thanks for your help Kevin.

 

Show Edges in Rhino is a good indication of unconnected geometry. I tend to use it to check for watertight solids before 3d printing. I think it means the edges don't technically touch but the error is usually very small and not visible. As Art says, nesting of solid additions can be an issue. Normally the errors don't show up in VW (except when further operations fail) but show up in exports to other software as missing faces, flipped normals, overlapping points/edges etc.

 

I rebuilt some of your extrudes so they intersected instead of just meeting and was able to get a watertight solid (at least something that shows as water tight in Rhino). However it wouldn't deform either so there is still something about the geometry VW doesn't like. I would submit your file and this thread to tech support and see what they say. Perhaps its a bug or a limitation, or perhaps the geometry can be used for future testing.

 

I've attached the file containing the watertight solid.

 

Kevin

tapersolid_notworking_KM.vwx

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Thank you both for your advice about keeping Solid Additions to a minimum. I had no way of knowing this to be an issue before, and so I'm a little confused as to why Vectorworks doesn't let me know somehow within the software.... Also I must say it's disappointing that the software won't just do what I want it to and let you mess up the model and be creative. It's a great hinderance when you spend a few hours modeling something and find that you can't do a simple deformation that you were planning on using to model. When 3D is often unreliable, there's no point in using it if 2D is reliable. I hope this gets addressed, or I'll have to resort to using outside software to create my models.

 

Thanks again.

Edited by ford519
misspelled "advice"
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