Extruding Planes. **56k Warning**

[HawkeyeSG]

Iam working in 3D on a Cathedral. I need to print it out using a 3D printer. They are pretty cool if you havnet heard of them, they lay down very thin layers of powder with glue where the drawing is, therfore it is best to work with solids, because planes tend to just cumble when handled or when blowing the dust away. Anyway, I made the Ceilings using the Rulesurf and Edgesurf commands, they are very intricate with lots of curves. I need to know if there is anyway to either add thickness to those planes, extrude those planes, or fill in the area between the roof and the ceiling with a solid object. Any help would be greatly appriciated, I have been stuck on this for days, which has forced me to work on other areas, and the ceilign has been pushed off to the last thing to do. Thank You.

[MickD]

Sounds very cool!
You could probably do this in arx but for the odd job it's probably not worth it. If you do it all the time I could look into it a bit further with arx.
The easiest way I can think of would be to draw a cross setion of the roof section ( a part of the roof which makes up the whole roof) and 'revolve' it if it is curved in all directions.
Another way is to use a csg method, start with basic shapes and keep performing boolean operations on them untill you get the desired result.
Could you post a picture or something to have a look at?

[Eddie]

8) You could also try something like this
Solidify.zip (http://www.freecadapps.com/swdetails.php?page=search&review=3359&rowcolor=fff fcc)

I haven't tested it so beware......

[HawkeyeSG]

Here is a picture, I have adjusted the ceiling since I last posted, basically just simplifing it a little bit with some parts that are more of a straight curved plane instead of a complex plane. I have also almost givin up hope and moved on to another project. This is for school, and we can do whatever we want, so I talked to the instructor and he agreed that it might be bettter to just try something else, that doesnt mean that I wont finish the cathedral. And I would really like to know if there is a resolution to this problem. Here are some pictures.

http://www.myweb.cableone.net/hawkeyeal07/SWiso.jpg
http://www.myweb.cableone.net/hawkeyeal07/wireframe.jpg
http://www.myweb.cableone.net/hawkeyeal07/ceiling.jpg

[HawkeyeSG]

I have no Idea what ARX is. I know there are a few files like that in my directories.
And iam nto sure how to use plugins yet..... This is only about my 4th month workin in AutoCAD... and that is just 3 classes a week. So, Iam probably not as advanced as most people here, might need some help implementing these things.

[csiarch]

HawkeyeSG: I see a lot of repetitive elements in you drawings (which, bTW, seem quite nice!). Are you developing these as separate drawings and inserting them as blocks? This is what the big kids do to keep file size manageable.

:)

[hendie]

you should be able to make a close approximation of your roof using solids.
Take the roof X-section, offset it and close the gaps, make it into a closed polyline and then extrude it., do the same again, turn it through 90° and union the two to get the main part of your roof.
create a sphere, subtract what you don't need and union that onto the end of your roof. The all that's left is those... whadymacallits along the roof ~you will probably have to experiment a bit to get the shape of those (a torus comes to mind) , but once you have it, just array them and union them to the roof.

[Archimedes]

wow... nice job there...

well back to your question...

first thing first....

1. using rulesurf will make segmented planes... therefore try exploding them and extrude since each plane after exploding will be independent use union to unify them...
2. try playing with the ucs (all its rotation) in order to control the extrusion to path and with the addition of slice command probably you can make arches... im sure of that... ü
3. well you can also try basic geometry the manipulate it with union and subtract commands...

hope this helps...


"Practice makes perfect...Perfect is flawless" ü