Converting 2D Shapes into 3D Solids

[rdrines]

I need to extrude a bunch of old 2D designs I created as shape profiles. These shapes were created by cutting and trimming a variety of lines, arcs and circles that were later grouped and dimensioned for machining.

When I tried to extrude or convert the shapes into an extruded 3D shape so they could be applied to another design none of the designs I tried to convert would lend themselves to a conversion.

Has anyone any experience on how these designs might be modified without the effort to recreate them over again using 3D tools?

[propstuff]

You need to compose, add, clip etc your component parts till you get a single polyline (closed) surface before extruding.

N.

[DDDesign]

Roger,

groups cannot be extruded. You will need to ungroup them. Then if you apply the extrude command to several selected objects at once, the result will be a group of extrudes.

[rdrines]

Thanks for the ideas. In retrospect I think I was hoping for a magic tool I hadn't found yet, but it seems there is no easy way around this issue.

Thanks again.

[propstuff]

Well roger,

you will need to ungroup them, but if the profile is comprised of lines , arcs, polylines etc, and the ends of them all touch exactly then the magic tool is the compose command. If there are discontinuities or overlaps you will have to fix those (combine-connect tool), but other than that it's "instant surface" for extruding.

N.

[rdrines]

Hello Nicholas,

Trying to make the old profiles workable will be a lot more work than creating them again as new solids with Add and Subtract.

When I submitted the post I was hoping there was something like a NURBS trace outer shape tool I hadn't noticed. This idea came after I noticed the Trace BMP tool. My hope was to create a smooth trace of the various profiles. With that I would have been able to Extrude the shapes and get on with creating the symbols I need for the library and layout.

Oh well, maybe in a future release.

Thanks for responding.

[mike m oz]

Roger - Avoid 3D solid additions and subtractions. From what you have described you do not need to get into this.

Extrudes work only on 2D shapes. It should be quicker to ungroup each existing 2D profile and compose it as Nicholas has suggested, rather than to draw the 2D profile again.

The only proviso, as Nicholas points out, is that the 2D line components must join exactly. If they were drawn accurately to begin with they will. If they weren't then you will probably be better off drawing them again.

If they are very close then Chain Maker from Vectorbits might help you. http://vectorbits.com/

[ 09-11-2005, 05:46 AM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

[Jim Smith]

Depending on how the 2-d shapes were drawn you may be able to use the "ADD Surface" tool. Also keep in mind whatever approch one uses, remove redundant points from the 2-d object otherwise these will show up as "stray" lines within the 3-d object once the 2-d polygon/polyline is extruded.

[rdrines]

Jim,

Add surface worked on a few of the more simple shapes and solved the extrude limitation. However, when the shape starts to mix polylines with arcs, Add Surface leaves holes in the shape.

For a sample of a fairly simple shape that didn't work, I've posted a VW file here: Sample Shape

In this example, and there are many with similar shapes, it was simpler to just create the shape with 3D-Tools and use the Add-Subtract tools.

With all that said, I'm really open to learning new approaches.

Thanks for responding.

[alanmac]

Roger

To avoid the missing sections is why you need, as suggested before, to use the combine tool.

I'll admit it is not always successful, but that seems to be for all the reasons propstuff outlined

I couldn't get a very simple series of arcs and lines to join, it was only after zooming in very, very, closely could I see the lines did not meet, overlapped,etc. Once edited all worked okay.

I thought they were touching etc from the smart cursor feedback, but zooming showed otherwise.

I also had better luck with combining some of my objects in pieces rather than the whole object at once - don't know why !!

Make sure that once you have combined the setting is solid in your atttributes before you extrude otherwise you will get just the outline. I think it goes to solid by default in combine but its worth checking.

Of course, as you know it will only show solid as an extruded shape once you do a render, hidden line or any of the others.

Tried to look at your sample but i've only got 10.5 here, 11.5 at work so can't see your file.

Alan

[ 09-10-2005, 02:14 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[rdrines]

Hello Alan,

You were right about Zooming way in. If I increase the size to 462,981% (Big Number) I can see how the arc and polyline didn't meet. Connecting one of them was easy, but I was never able to get the polyline to connect everywhere and then convert to a solid. I'll need to learn more for certain.

Thanks for the tip. I would have never thought to increase the magnification that much to see what was happening.

This has now gone from trying to avoid a lot of work to a neat learning experience.

[alanmac]

Roger

At the zooming level I got down to I found the nudge tool worked great for moving and getting the lines together, but it can be tedious because at this magnification you have to zoom out again to select the other line to move that if you need to.

Bear in mind at this sort of magnification you are only really effecting VW's capability to perform the combine action. It won't really show in your drawing or object information pallette because of the small increments of movement.

Well that's what I found anyway.

Alan

[ 09-10-2005, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: alanmac ]

[alanmac]

Roger

I'm not sure after reading your posts again if you are trying to connect using the connect tool in the tool pallettes.

Sorry if I gave you any slightly misleading info in that regard, but the zooming is not wrong, as you have seen.

I seem to get compose and combine muddled in reading posts, but I believe they may well do the same thing, hopefully others more knowledgable will let me know.

I was just making sure that my lines were touching, then I was using the "compose" tool in the "tool" drop down menu, in version 10.5. to create my solid 2D object for extrusion.

Alan

[propstuff]

Roger, Alan,

the 3rd mode of the combine tool does more or less the same thing as the compose command but only for 2 objects at a time and with the addition of trimming/ extending the line parts to meet. Well thats what it's supposed to do. It's a bit flakey at times and doesn't give any feedback that it's been successful. IE you have to select the object to see if it has worked or not.

One of it's limitations is that it will not finally close a polyline. That is; you connect up all the parts with the connect tool, it shows as a complete surface in 2D, but the "last" pair of end points are not actually joined. IE it is an "open" polyline.

The result of this is that when it's extruded you get an extruded "edge" and not a surface.

To fix this you need to get the 2 ends apart a little and close the gap between them with the Hide/Show (last) mode of the 2D reshape tool.

If the last 2 ends happen to be the ends of arcs like in your example it means that you have to distort the arc to get them to close the poly :-(

So, I join the curved sections first and try to leave the last, unjoined ends to be in straight sections of the poly. That way you can drag out one end of the straight section, close the poly, and then delete the surplus vertex. :-)

BTW, I use both the surface commands and the combine tools in different circumstances. The surface commands are often easier, but do not cope well with reflex curves whereas the combine/connect procedure, when it works, doesn't care what kind of line, curve etc you have.

cheers,

N.

[ 09-11-2005, 01:05 AM: Message edited by: propstuff ]

[rdrines]

I tried the Chain Tool from VectorBITS as it seemed close to what I was hoping to find. When I tested it on a shape, it allowed me to extrude the shape but it didn't fill the polyline section of the shape. Because I need all the components of the shape to be filled in, I'll need to find a fix for that limitation.

Chain also caused VectorWorks 11.51 to crash when I was using the Fly-Around tool to rotate the shape. This came as a surprise as VW never crashes on this workstation.

I'm going to play with this some more to see if this happens on other shapes as well.

Thanks for the nice lead to VectorBITS.

[DDDesign]

So, from the above discussion, it seems that there is a good reason to ask for a new tool- one that will either close a polyline, or report where there might be problems wehn you try and extrude it. I would certainly find it useful - I occaisionally get shapes eg combinations of lines and arcs or fillets that simply won't extude, and feel sure that they're closed, but I can find the problem. Sometimes I just have to redraw the shape from scratch and maybe try alternative geometries.

[mike m oz]

DDD - try decomposing and then recomposing. Then make sure that the Closed option is checked on the OIP.

If you are still having problems then Chain Maker from VectorBits might help you as it can compose touching or nearly touching objects with a single click.

"VB Chain Maker: Select and/or compose contiguous lines, arcs, polygons and polylines, with adjustable tolerance for non-touching objects." http://vectorbits.com/

[propstuff]

Mike,

the "close" tick box in the OIP is only available for Polygons. (IE straight sided objects) For Polylines it doesnt exist.

So, it can be used, but only if you don't mind your curves being turned into facets.

cheers,

N.

[mike m oz]

Thanks Nicholas - I had missed that!

[rdrines]

Well I'm learning, but the surprises keep coming.

Today I noticed that using a much larger Zoom value before I cut lines to form the shapes achieves much closer tolerances. Clearly the message is that the connection tolerances of the tools are tight, so the tolerances of the alignment and cutting must be just as tight, and Zooming-in is a good way to achieve that performance.

Using this mantra, I found making the connection much easier, but here is today's surprise:

While trying to complete the last polyline connection of this shape, I found using the Connect Tool from the palette produced some alarming results. Follow the images to see what I found (Thanks to UNDO & REDO):

This image shows the overall shape and that each component in the shape is selected:

InitialShapes-Selected

In this image I've Zoomed way in to highlight the area of the last section. This is where the polyline hasn't been connected to the adjacent ARC. When I first Zoomed in it seemed like they were connected, but they were just touching so I move the straight line away slightly so I could use the Connect Tool from the palette:

MagifiedLastPoint-B4-Connect

In this image, it shows what the Connect tool produced after the connection was made:

ResultOfMakingConnection

I'm not sure what to think about the result of using the Connect Tool from the palette. It certainly isn't what I was expecting but it can easily be undone. I'm also not sure why none of the Join commands from the Tools menu connected these two points.

While writing this I noticed the Connect-Mode and tried the connection again. This time I selected Dual-Object mode and found the process worked okay. Because it worked, I considered erasing this post, but there was a lesson I learned and made others who aren't as experienced might find it informative:

ResultOfMakingConnection-DualObject

While the connection was made, the 3D shape that resulted ended up being another profile of a shell. This is still confusing and makes me appreciate the 3D tools even more. In 3D, I can generate these shapes over again fairly quickly and don't seem to run into "Artictic Surprises."

On the positive side, I guess I could use the surprises as an impressionistic print.