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Corner joint with fill tool?
Braden_Miller
Member Posts: 2 EDU
I'm looking for a way to create a smooth joint between the three of these circles (ideally without clipping). What came to mind was the fill tool, but I can't seem to get it to work. Does anyone have any suggestions? 
0
Answers
A 3-way blend is a somewhat classical surfacing challenge. There are a lot of ways you could do it depending on your need for great surface quality. The easy, ugly way (if it doesn't need high aesthetic value) is to make a sphere where they all meet and fillet the intersections. The complex, pretty way involves a lot of surfacing tools and working in thoughtful surface patches to get it blending in a smooth, liquid-like way. Here's a document with examples of each (I'm sure there are a ton of other solutions too). I'm using some of my custom shapes features, just as a shortcut, but you could do it with extrusions and revolves too.
Here's the nice smooth one with the zebra stripes turned on to accentuate what reflections will do in real life on the part if you make it.
And here's the uglier utilitarian one (notice the way the stripes don't flow cleanly around the shape. You can see the breaks between surfaces, like where the fillet edges are, or where the cylinder meets the sphere.