Fusion
Yeah, definitely a problem there. I was able to Stitch the guitar top surfaces, with a tolerance of 6mm, indicating there are definitely gaps between the lofts, which was something I was thinking about how to avoid with your loft method. I tried boxing off a section of the guitar and extending those loft edges, and also extruded the guitar sides, and made a bottom, to see if could do a Boundary Fill under Modeling, but it always failed.
You have a lot of real nice work there, but if it were me, I would attempt a small new test model using your loft method, with two adjacent loft sections if that's absolutely necessary, and figure out a way to be sure there are no gaps between those two sections, verifying this via some method like doing a Boundary Fill.
Really awesome progress though!
Jesse
I was able to fix a few of my surface trim problems, just a matter of order of operationsand when to trim.
Any chance you can tell my how to tell the program to switch what side is the fron or back of material for appearance, I get wood grain on most sections, then solid tan on others. I want to make it all uniform and less patchwork look.
EDIT: Okay, I was able to stitch all the top pieces together with a 0.2mm tolerance and that made a matching surface rather than than random tan blocks. HOWEVER, still need to fix the vertical face on the edges.
Well I think I figured out how to make it solid by using "boundary fill". But as soon as I figure one thing out i hit another problem. I now need to cut across the top of the model along two different planes. I am pretty sure I should use "Split Face" and/or "split Body" function but I get an error saying they dont intersect, and it sure as hell looks like they do.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5CVrUOu0pQhUHBVRGQ3MEdtQWM/view?usp=sharing
I have both a solid body model as well as the shell pieces in tact. Some of the shell pices I can trim but not all and I dont know why.
Sounds like a plan, or you could just delete everything back to where you begin the lofting process (I scrubbed the timeline back first to quickly find that). Just a few possible tips. (First, you did what I forgot/never realized that you can select multiple profiles along the single loft "path".) I deselected Chain Selection, but kept Merge Edges, and I was able to just go around selecting all the spline segments at the different levels, and when they all matched, it would make a loft along everything. I ran into trouble with the bottom most spline, and also further around the guitar, likely due to gaps between the spline segments that need a little fixing via Coincident constraints or what not.
Also one possible way to nicely make areas where there are special cuts, like that circular area in the bottom right of the body, is to just first draw your contour lines to extend along that area, such that your loft (possibly a single loft as per the first tip) extends over that area. Then later you can make the guitar sides which can then be used to trim the overhanging loft.
I admire your persistence!
Jesse
Another option is to do Tspline lofts, and that gives a mesh that can be edited nicely after the loft is performed. To see the mesh though it seems like sometimes the materials like wood need to be turned off. Another cool thing I was playing around with is creating a Tspline mesh over the guitar face. In Sculpt environment, I went to Modify>Convert and chose Brep, allowing me to choose the faces of the guitar top. It seems to have trouble with the back of the guitar for some reason:
But the front converted to a Brep surface fine. I also played around with Modify>Merge Edges in Sculpt environment which seems to work really well if want to make single contiguous mesh/surface:
The top is actually flat just like you had it before, but the curved mesh line gives appearance that top is curved.
Here's another perspective:
Just some thoughts, and I can upload the model if you would like to play around with it.
Jesse
I appreciate all the help. But I can finally announce success!
I started completely over, still had some isues with the face splits, but some persistance, and different work flows attempted resulted in a finished solid. A few holes etc to put through the body, but I am at a point I can start playing with the CAM portion of the software and test cut the top in some cheap wood or MDF.
A few more pics to share. I stay up way too late at night working in this thing. Plus a photo of a guitar I have made before with my CNC. This however is more of a challenge since the top isn't flat.
