Hot MESH!

[cberg]

Having run out of Boolean Tool Options, I am now in the unpleasant world of VW Meshes.  From what I have gathered, meshes appear to be groups of 3D polygons.  And as such there are very very limited editing tools available. 

 

Are there any tricks to dealing with meshes?  Ideally, I would like to do the following:

 

1.   I would like to be able to split and join mesh faces using a curve or other 3d Polygon. 

2.  It would be great to extract edges.  -- OK I think I figured this one out. 

3.  It would be helpful to project curves to mesh faces or intersect.  

4.  I would be great to select edges and create a surface.  (As long as they are coplanar)

 

How do others deal with this not-so-user-friendly set of VW geometry?

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2018 by cberg

[cberg]

So this what I'm learning. Meshes are not your friend.  And wherever possible try to convert things back to generic solids using the Zoomer approach.  That way you know they are relatively well formed.  Oy vey!!!

[Kevin McAllister]

1 hour ago, cberg said:

Meshes are not your friend.

Definitely not in VW. I would recommend converting to NURBS instead of meshes if you need to do more editing and its not achievable using solids tools/commands. VW is a fairly proficient NURBS editor which will do everything on your list above. You can also use Stitch and Trim to create a generic solid.

 

Kevin

 

[cberg]

So if I needed to split this flat NURBS surface with a cutting object (NURBS Curve, 3D Poly, etc) How could I do it?  (Besides redrawing both shapes?) How do extract the edges of individual sides of the curve?  I'll search for the NURBS 101 video! 

 

Edited January 26, 2018 by cberg

[cberg]

I see... the split tool.  Not the 3d Power pack split tool seems to do the trick. 

[Kevin McAllister]

7 minutes ago, cberg said:

So if I needed to split this flat NURBS surface with a cutting object (NURBS Curve, 3D Poly, etc) How could I do it?  (Besides redrawing both shapes?)

 

Use the Project Tool while facing the shape you want to cut in an appropriate view. The cutting curve can be a 2d screen plane object (circle, rectangle, polyline, line) or a NURBS curve. You can split or trim. You can cut a circle in a NURBS surface for example.

 

9 minutes ago, cberg said:

 How do extract the edges of individual sides of the curve?

 

Use the Extract Tool to extract curves, edges or surfaces. Make sure Create Planar Objects is unchecked in the tool preferences.

 

To join a collection of edge curves use Compose. To explode them use Decompose.

 

Kevin

 

[cberg]

Thanks Kevin.  I think I got everything to work as well as possible.  Wherever possible, I've been trying to "de-mesh" or "un-nurb" the surfaces so that I can better work with them.