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Decal Help - Intersected Lofts - Weird Faces

7 REPLIES 7
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Message 1 of 8
jeanchile
713 Views, 7 Replies

Decal Help - Intersected Lofts - Weird Faces

Hello All,

 

I have a buddy of mine that wants me to use this stupid piece of wood in a design for him. I have taken pictures of the wood, traced over them in AutoCAD, put them in sketches in IV, and used two intersecting lofts to define the general shape. The finished shape will work "as is" for what we are doing but it's obviously not an exact match.

 

I have then created sketches/planes and inserted the images in order to place them as decals so the wood looks like the real piece when we work on the designs and I show him his options.

 

The problem is that I got the decals to work on three of the faces and it looks great for what I am trying to accomplish:

PINE PLANK.png

 

Now I just need to get the other three faces to look the same. When I select the Decal command and try to select the face it won't let me select them. I can select them when I am not in the Decal command.

 

This is the first part file I have ever created that was this kind of shape and, although I have placed decals many times before, this is the first time I have done so to a face this complex. I am in desperate need of people smarter than me to help me out a little bit here. Does anyone have the time to take a look at this?

 

Thanks for the help!

Inventor Professional
7 REPLIES 7
Message 2 of 8
jeanchile
in reply to: jeanchile

I am having trouble attaching the files with the decals, they're too large. I'll post the part file and then see what I can attach below separately. Here's the images.

Inventor Professional
Message 3 of 8
jeanchile
in reply to: jeanchile

I had to strip the decals that did work out of the part file in order for this to be small enough to post.

Inventor Professional
Message 4 of 8
jeanchile
in reply to: jeanchile

Okay I've tried a few other things today (e.g. splitting more faces, redoing the sketches/planes, etc.) but nothing I do seems to work. In reading the wikihelp on decals it says that the sketch plane needs to be tangential or parallel to the projected face.

 

1.) How do I get that with these faces? They are curvy loft surfaces.

2.) How did it work with the other three faces? They were similar to these other three.

 

Any help woudl be appreciated.

Inventor Professional
Message 5 of 8
LT.Rusty
in reply to: jeanchile

Sorry bud, I don't think you're going to get decals to work on those surfaces ... Those bark faces don't look like they're going to be tangent to ANYTHING.  Your best bet might just be to use wood textures for the wood, and create a bark texture for the bark, then apply those to the faces.  You won't get exactly the texture of the specific piece of wood you're handling, but you'll also not spend the next several days tearing your hair out over it.

 

If you really desperately need it to be THIS EXACT piece of wood, then you're going to want to do your texturing in a package like Max that lets you do UV mapping.  Showcase might be able to do it with decals, but I'm not positive.

Rusty

EESignature

Message 6 of 8
jeanchile
in reply to: LT.Rusty

Thank you for the response! I can certainly accept that, and I already have to some degree. But because I am also trying to learn something here I have a desire to figure out why it worked on three of the faces and not the other three. It's my understanding there is no difference between them so why wouldn't it work? Any ideas on what the difference is between the two sides?

Inventor Professional
Message 7 of 8
LT.Rusty
in reply to: jeanchile

There are differences, though - none of the faces are mirror images of any of the others.  For instance, the ends - if you look, one end is two separate faces, while the opposite end is only one face.

 

To be perfectly frank, I'm not sure how those three even worked.  I've never had any luck getting a decal to apply on something that non-planar.  If you have one of the Product Design Suites rather than just Inventor, I'd assign a different texture to each end, the top and bottom, and each side, and then use decals in there.  I'd wind up tearing my hair out if I had to do that with Inventor.  🙂

Rusty

EESignature

Message 8 of 8
jeanchile
in reply to: LT.Rusty

I do have the PDSU I just don't know how to use any of the other programs yet (I use Showcase right up to where it blue screens my computer and I have purchased books for the others I just haven't learned yet).

 

I just thought it would be cool to have in there. It definitely doesn't have to look like that I just thought he would be so amazed if it actually looked like the piece of wood while we were screwing around with designs. Then when it didn't work I took it as "user-error" and wanted to learn something.

 

I'll just use default appearances on the other faces unless someone else has a solution or something to further my education in the matter. I seriously never use complex faces like this. Everything I do has square edges.

 

Thanks for the help!

Inventor Professional

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