Organic Surface?

Cache_River_Mill

Needs some organic shaping on the face of the leaves. Anyone have a solution to do this within Onshape? I can export it as an stl and shape it, but it would be amazing to keep it as a SolidWorks file.

kevin_o_toole_1

Here's a feature that provides manipulators for modifying a surface. It simply performs a loft and a replace face with a nicer interface.
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/2c277b8c65f802c616cd16d4/v/8460dd533e59ecf92219c86b/e/cf6e6e7f9227d2ebbc72d1fa

I'd recommend using split face first to give yourself some workable pieces, then applying sculpt. If you need to do patch-work at the end, Onshape's native (month-old) fill surface tool is great for that.

Naturally, any tool which provides artistic surface embellishments, like sculpt, has the possibility of looking poor when you make upstream changes, since your modifications are defined on parametric points of a surface, and the parameterization could shift underneath you. However, if you're okay with touching up pieces of sculpting, this can get you rolling without converting away from the underlying B-rep format.

brucebartlett

Interesting feature, I just had a play and very easy to use. I will be interested to see if this work on the leaves.

@maximilian_schomm @kevin_o_toole_1 oole_1 ,  I can't seem to select features from the face for a re-edit. 

https://cad.onshape.com/documents/8f92f8d5efd246729c42b2a0/w/292662225264a53fef180613/e/316fc7a70248bed8f0a38a40

kevin_o_toole_1

In the example you gave, the sculpt fails because it didn't preserve the edge you split the face along.

The split face was on a diagonal line, and, naturally, what you wanted the tool to do was keep that line in place as you sculpted, joined with the rest of the body. Unfortunately, the sculpt tool remaps the whole UV rectangle it shows, which changes the geometry along your split line, and causes the underlying replace-face to fail.

A simple workaround is to make sure you only split faces along the UV lines that parameterize the face. For a planar face, this pretty much always means global verticals and horizontals. I've made that change here and the feature works fine:
https://cad.onshape.com/documents/ee34d5bf0d7b9889a6678d13/w/706477875bf94219494f9f62/e/c62c78192c045ced204f813c
The other half of this workaround is: when you do need to split things up along different lines, split the whole part, then use fill surface to patch things up afterwards.

Obviously neither of these workarounds are ideal. The only real fix would be totally rewriting this feature to into one which does enable preserving those end conditions. Onshape is currently working on improving our surface modeling capabilities across the board, but our main focus will be on surfacing tools that are robust and parametric, rather than more freeform tools like this. So I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on any improvements to this particular custom feature.

brucebartlett

Thanks, @kevin_o_toole_1 I was just playing to see whats possible. Looking forward to the proper surfacing capabilities, I have never really had to use surfaces in professional projects but it's always fun to play with them and prove the capability of Onshape. These tools are definitely what your consumer product design house's need. 

Cache_River_Mill

Kevin, that looks very promising, exactly what I was imagining. I will see if I can use this and get back with you.

Cache_River_Mill

This tool is an excellent step in the right direction.
However unless I can manipulate the shape of the grid, it will be difficult to use well. The Grid shape is very important. Needs to flow with the shape of the leaf.

I was able to sculpt the correct shape of the leaves as an STL, but that's not what we need. If the grid were adjustable, this same shape could be obtained with the SF feature.

maximilian_schommer

@cache_river_millworks Thanks for the suggestions! Sculpt was definitely a rough prototype that needed a lot of work. I created a new version, Release 2 that incorporates the changes you suggested. You now have manipulators in 3 directions (normal, u_hat, and v_hat), and that lets you control the grid of the surface in a more controlled manner (I hope)! 

Sculpt now also works with Cylinders and other closed surfaces!! (It doesn't work with spheres or doubly closed surfaces.)

Hope this helps! If you have any more suggestions send them my way!

Maximilian Schommer

dick_van_der_vaart

I played a bit with sculpt face and I really like it, and it can be very usefull.
Is it possible that you can select more than one handle at a time? and give parameters to the movement off the handle's.
Would be great.

Thanks, Dick van der Vaart

Cache_River_Mill

maximilian_schommer said:

@cache_river_millworks Thanks for the suggestions! Sculpt was definitely a rough prototype that needed a lot of work. I created a new version, Release 2 that incorporates the changes you suggested. You now have manipulators in 3 directions (normal, u_hat, and v_hat), and that lets you control the grid of the surface in a more controlled manner (I hope)! 

Sculpt now also works with Cylinders and other closed surfaces!! (It doesn't work with spheres or doubly closed surfaces.)

Hope this helps! If you have any more suggestions send them my way!

Maximilian Schommer

Wow, this is awesome. Thank you max!!
I will apply this to my work and keep you posted.

Cache_River_Mill

Max,

After using it, I have some feedback. The feature works great, we so appreciate this!

Here are some suggestions that would make the feature much easier to use:

• Ability to move U & V manipulators at the same time similar to an xyz transform. (see figure 3)
  
• Calculate loft after lines have been manipulated. (it is very slow because it lofts as you go)
• Option to rotate U V origin direction.

Again, thank you so much.

Cache River Mill



   
                            figure 1                                          figure 2, Adjusted mesh                                      figure 3, xy manipulator     

Cache_River_Mill

@maximilian_schommer
Max, would you be interested in modifying this featurescript for us if we were to pay you for it? If so what are your rates?

Thank you

maximilian_schommer

@cache_river_millworks

See the PM I sent, 

Maximilan Schommer

kevin_o_toole_1

Calculate loft after lines have been manipulated. (it is very slow because it lofts as you go)

By the way, other than the manipulator arrows themselves, FS features don't have any "early feedback". That is, the feature will not return anything until it's finished, so even if the loft lines have been "calculated" earlier, they won't be displayed.

The workaround we've found works well for this is to give your feature a checkbox for "Quick-drag mode". When it's checked, only calculate the splines, and when it's unchecked, compute the full loft.

Cache_River_Mill

This is great! Thank you Kevin.

MBartlett21

Look at my awesome lego piece!  

MBartlett21

Another use of this feature is flattening faces. It is very  useful

MBartlett21

@maximilian_schommer

It seems you got the sculpt face featurescript working with the "quick drag" mode,
Could you make a version so we could try it, please??

maximilian_schommer

@mbartlett21

Sorry about the long time in updating/responding. I've finally updated sculpt surface (it has the "quick drag" mode now, for one), I just posted a new discussion in the Featurescript category with more details about the update.