Create surface from perpendicular sketches? (making 3D printed mask)

pytho_ergo

Hello people,

I quickly drew up these two sketches for a snake design mask and would like to know how I could possibly use both to form a surface which I can thicken later? Image below should hopefully explain better:

The front plane sketch is the main front facing design, and the right plane is just one spline sticking out of the middle. If I could create the general mask shape with those sketches, then cut the eyes and other features out of that mask shape later, that would be great. If I need 3D splines going between the two sketches, please let me know, I'm not sure how to use those in something like a loft as guides. Project file link will be shared if requested/needed.

MichaelPascoe

I recommend using a sketches, guides, and lofts. Here is an example of a similar workflow:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/55e98155dca4ba4e8049a18d/w/dbf02fb86aafef13f08be126/e/67100c66e8…

Also, it will help you out a ton if you take the Advanced Surfacing Learning Pathway from the Learning Center.

MDesign

Definately do the Surfacing tutorials. They answer a lot of questions and give you great starting points for getting into surfacing work. I sketched up a little of what you had. not sure what the look was you were going for but this is what I ended up with. You can get the main surface with what you have already with loft and setting the end conditions to normal and playing with the magnitude.

pytho_ergo

Ah, if it isn't Pascoe himself! Thank you very much for replying, I actually had that great motorcycle helmet example open while designing, I'll try making a copy of the document to get a better understanding of it. Also, the Advanced Surfacing course looks incredibly helpful, that'll probably solidify my understanding of tools like lofting, out of many.

Yikes, I'm in for a lot of 3D modelling…

pytho_ergo

Alright, I have come a long way in 24 hours, here's the progress so far!

Well, I have another question. You see, I'm trying to make some sort of snake scales with Pascoe's "Texture" tool, but have been having a hard time trying to get the shapes to match between faces, is there another custom feature or method to do the entire mask's surface all at once? I'd like the gaps between each scale to be even, so something like a hexagonal layout pattern would be needed, like seen in the "fill pattern" custom feature. I can cut out the eyes and other features later if some if the scales overflow, that's fine.

MDesign

Never used that script… but it looks like you have a move option… you could just moved them till the midline splits those hexagons in the middle. then when its mirrored it will have the look you desire.

MichaelPascoe

@pytho_ergo One face at a time is the biggest limitation of that feature at the moment. The elusive V2 will be able to do multi surfaces, but I will need to get funding for that since I no longer have the free time for custom features.

That said, here is a tool you can use to turn your model into a single surface, then texture that:

Drape Surface by @EvanReese
https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/27913/new-custom-feature-drape-surface…

Perhaps cut the eyes out with an extrude after you drape the surface and texture.

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pytho_ergo

Seems really fidgety, maybe Pascoe could help. Basically, imagine a piece of cloth with 1mm thick hexagonal shapes grid on it, being laid down onto the mask, the hexagons should conform and contour to the mask so that every edge of the hexagons are a constant thickness. Sounds difficult, but shouldn't be too hard, seeing how powerful Onshape is.

pytho_ergo

@MichaelPascoe How much… you need? Pleasure to do business with you 🤣
You've made so many great features for free, you've never had any real funding?

MichaelPascoe

😂 Probably around 2k USD to re-write the Texture feature from the ground up with new improvements in mind; there's a list of about 20 improvements. Hard to tell exactly how long it would take, but it is a pretty involved feature due to all the customization it gives the users. Most smaller features that I write for people range from 500 to 1500 USD. But they are never as in depth as the Texture feature. The majority of my free custom features were written before I had kids and started game dev.

Funding? Not for most of the free features. Lately CADSharp has funded a few of them like Thickness Analysis. They are the contracting group I work for. But my free time now goes to my wife and kids, then if my free time has free time, I spend it on game dev not custom features.

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EvanReese

@pytho_ergo I get what you're after and this use case is one of the main reasons I developed Drape Surface, but in the end, Onshape isn't the best tool for very organic texture wrapping like this. While this could be possible, it's a different approach than Pascoe's Texture feature or my Attractor Pattern feature, which just patterns an existing object around and scales them. You'd need a way to programmatically create each hexagon in the UV space of the object. I'm working on a technique to do something like this, but it's not ready to demo just yet. Even this workflow needs a single clean surface like the ones from Drape Surface

To get what you're after you could export your Onshape model and do UV unwrapping and texture mapping a displacement map available in Blender or Rhino as a finishing step. Here's a Blender video on the topic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa_1LjeWsJg

S1mon

Plasticity will also deform things from one surface reference to another, assuming you can create a single surface.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoW0X0Fcjkk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUUXY4DltE8

EvanReese

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/118621#Comment_118621

ooh yeah. That made me really excited since it's also Parasolid. It gives me hope that Onshape could roll out a tool like that someday.

S1mon

Yes. As far as I know Plasticity's deform is a wrapper around a Parasolid function.

Hope, yes. And also a way to encourage Onshape to move on things like this.

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

I'm working on a deform feature right now actually but there's a lot of intermediate steps to take before I get there. Step 1 was curve tween, step 2 is edit surface, steps 3 through N are a bit TBD depending on how the rest of this goes but I'm making good progress.

pytho_ergo

That's a lot of comments, a whole lot to take in and read about! I've only switched from Tinkercad to Onshape a month ago for IGCSE, jeez!

Here's some progress, because I'm sure people are wondering.

Drape Surface for the WIN, jaw is next, thank you all very much. There will most likely be more to come.

EvanReese

https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/118625#Comment_118625

Im definitely interested in keeping up with this development.

MichaelPascoe

@Derek_Van_Allen_BD Quick thoughts: You'll need to get the uv curves from each surface and then re-create each surface curve with the deformation applied. Will probably need to do all of the shared edges separately so that it ensures they all stay connected while being deformed. Then use the deformed connected edges in combination with the deformed uv curves to re-create each face using Boundary surface or Fill or Loft while keeping in mind the adjacent face relationships (none, tangent, curvature). Once that's working.. Then have an option to deform holes or to re-apply them. Same for fillets maybe😅

Derek_Van_Allen_BD

@MichaelPascoe That's 90% the plan, with one clarification. I'm planning to operate on the control points and knots of the surfaces directly instead of attempting to work with the UV curves. Takes out two layers of abstraction and should leave me with just a bunch of coordinate transformations.

That's why curve tween is step 1. I need to build my neutral axis and parameterize the control point locations to "tweenspace" so that I can do that operation in reverse after an edit curve step.

MichaelPascoe

Sounds awesome!