Having Trouble Sculpting Surfaces into a Solid

[Anonymous]

I have a 3D drawing for an object I intend to have 3D printed currently made from surfaces stitched together.  I have managed to turn most of these surfaces into solids, but whenever I try and use the sculpt command for the top of the object, it gives me varying errors as to why it doesn't think the enclosed region is watertight.  More often than not I get "Inconsistent information in vertex and coedge attributes." but recently it has been saying "Operation did not add or remove material." and I'm frankly at a loss.  I have done my best to scour the drawing for holes in my surface setup, but I honestly can't find any.  If anyone has any thoughts on how I can either get around this issue, or make Autocad happy with me, by all means let me know.  The drawing is for a Small lid that will be used on a device my company is producing, nothing too fancy.  

Thanks

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous

I see you still have a mixture of object types in the lid. You still have many things overlapping as well so it is really hard to find the holes! I took one of the fillet top edges which was a NURB surface and just by tracing the two ends and then lofting I was able to get a solid.  Why don't you consider this to rebuild some of the objects in your model. Once you do this you should be able to join everything with a Union much easier.

These shows some of the issues:

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> it gives me varying errors as to why it doesn't think the enclosed region is watertight

Yep, AutoCAD is correct...

Just what I see first, in most cases the corners are the critical positions to look at.

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

Alfred,

I'll take a peek at those corners then, I'm fairly new to 3D modeling so I was under the impression that the SurfSculpt command trimmed any excess surface bits that weren't necessary to the enclosed volume.  

"and just by tracing the two ends and then lofting I was able to get a solid."

Ok, I'll try recreating each of those individual pieces then and see if that will do the trick.  When I tried lofting the whole top piece it didn't want to fill in the entire space.  

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

Kind of a basic question, but how do a trace a curve?  It looks to me like you remade the one surface in the picture by tracing the cross section and then extruding it?  And as for the fact that they're NURBS surfaces, I honestly don't know what properties that gives them, I just noticed it was easier to blend surfaces together if I converted them to NURBS.  

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous

I used SPLINE and snapped to points along the edge of your surface. I did this at both ends and then used LOFT to build the piece to connect them.

I made a short video to show you LOFT and SWEEP commands.

You might also want to try SURFPATCH to create the top surface.  I erased the existing surface you had, used SURPATCH Chain and selcted all the edges at the perimeter and got a nice clean one-piece surface.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

John,

I managed to SURFPATCH for the top surface no problem, same as you, but I can't seem to get a reliable bottom part to close it up and make it into a solid.  I've also tried taking the new top surface and the filleted edges and putting it back on top of the rest of the object, all the solid pieces, but when trying to SURFSCULPT those together I get " System inconsistency processing edge coincidence." as the error.  Can I not combine solids and surfaces with the SCULPT command?  Just getting that top curve is only half the issue, I still need to turn it all into one cohesive solid but that's where I'm running into a wall.  

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

I am also now getting the error "Coincident face_face_ints with different body vertices." when trying to sculpt, what does this error mean?  Can I not have a vertex of one surface touching the edge of another?

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

Is it possible to post your current model so I can check your progress?

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

Here you go John.

The hinge parts are taken care of and the only surfaces left are on the top of the model.  

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

The reason you can't get all this into a single solid is that many of the parts don't meet cleanly or have gaps or self-intersect.

I will see if there is anything I can do with the model but without the project parameters and constraints, this is very hard to make decisions about.

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

The original project only really had two purposes, to widen the lid by a quarter inch on each side, and add a bracket to the hinges to act as a lid stop (the lid would flip 180 degrees and hit other parts.  I hadn't planned on changing the external design of the lid, we still wanted to keep that same curvature on the top, but If you know of another way to get a similar curvature then I would welcome your expertise.  

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I am still working on the model for you.

The main problem I am facing is that much of this is not square or aligned perfectly which is why the corners with your fillet are such a mess.

Thanks for your patience.

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I have tried to clean up most of the body of this piece but due to inaccuracies in the geometry this has been very time consuming. For instance, the line of the front edge does not match from the right to the left side.

I hope that by looking at my drawing you will see the difference between what you gave me and what I built.

I haven't had time to finish the filleted edge at the top but was hoping to sweep the edge with an arc profile.

I know that I have not completed the model but I am hoping this will get you closer.

[Anonymous]

This I can work with!  Thank you for all your help John, I appreciate your patience with my less-than-stellar work.  I should be able to figure out the sweep on my own from this point with no problem.  

Thanks again!

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

I hate to pull you back into this John, but are there any special things I need to do to sweep the arc I've made along the spline paths in the drawing?  Whenever I attempt to, either in solid or surface mode, it gives me the error "Shared Library Error, unable to sweep selected object."  I can get the sweep to work for the very front of the piece because there is an open spline at that point, but I cannot sweep onto the closed spline loops.  Am I missing some setting in particular?

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

I suggest doing all the straight segments individually. You might need to "BREAK" the SPLINE at the top edge where the "straight" segments start to arc. Once you have all the straight parts complete then perhaps use Surfpatch to fill the corners.

Please let me know how this works for you.

Please select the Accept as Solution button if my post solves your issue or answers your question.

[Anonymous]

@john.vellek

Three questions,

1. The outside of the yellow top surface seems to have an outline of blue as well as extra corner points, do I want to place my curved surfaces here?  Or on the actual yellow corners thus causing the top surface to overlap with the filleted edge pieces?

2. Occasionally when trying to create a sweep Autocad tells me "Can't locate profile on rail", what does this mean?

3. Since the curved edges need to be a certain length on the top but longer on the bottom, just sweeping an arc along either the top or bottom curve is not good enough, how would I achieve this effect?

[john.vellek]

Hi @Anonymous,

The blue on the yellow solid is the edge so I assume that you want the top of your swept arc to touch the yellow.

The error message I have not seen before. Can you describe where in the model you have that happen?

[Anonymous]

The backside of the yellow spline, when exploded, was broken into 4 pieces.  3 of them worked fine as sweep paths, but the 4th, and smallest, would give that error.  I replaced that part of the curve with a normal line and it worked just fine.