Create form from body?

[-Nick-]

Hi,

I have a body which defines accurately the shape of a part I am designing except that I would like one of the faces to be slightly rounded.  Not having played with Forms, I had assumed that I could transform my body into a form and pull the face out, but I'm struggling to find a way.

Alternatively, I could re-create the form from the sketches but this produces a very different looking form.

Here is the part.

Any suggestions?

[laughingcreek]

When you say "form". I'm assuming your talking about t-splines.

Converting a solid body to a tspline is probably not the way to go on something like this. 

you could model a tspline surface, separate from the body, and perform a "replace face" operation on it.

The way I would approach it would be to use loft.  I think you'd get the best results that way.  can you indicate the face, and what the curvature would look like?

[-Nick-]

Yes, I'm talking about t-splines, (using "Form" because it says "Create Form" in the GUI). 

I tried also to loft the surface and failed miserably...  The face I am talking about is defined by the inner profile in Sketch 1 and I don't really care how much it is rounded - just trying to understand the workflow - but as a guide have a look at the curve in sketch 4.

Thanks for the help.

[laughingcreek]

The terminology is one of those idiosyncrasy I which fusion would address. is it a "form", a "t-spline", a "sculpted body"? 

but enough about fusion

Here's a screen cast of one approach using loft in the patch workspace. 

[laughingcreek]

hmm, screen cast doesn't seem to have attached.  trying again.

[-Nick-]

I also tried to loft the surface from the sketch using the straight and curved lines as profiles and the same rails as you but got the error, "Rail(s) cannot be tangent to profiles!".  How does splitting the face, (which splits the curve profile), avoid that?  No matter...

What I really want to do is to get that face into "t-spline, form, sculpt" mode, (TFS as I am now calling it), so that I can play around with it a bit more easily.  That where I am really struggling.

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

When you do a straight converstion of that face, your going to get the untrimmed nurbs surface version of it in tsplines (first part of screen cast).

I think to get a good result you'll need to make your tspline topology by hand. (rest of screen cast.)  Then use a "replace face" on it.  It can be tricky to keep the original edge of the object sharp and planer this way.  if that doesn't mater, then just use the untrimmed converted surface.

[-Nick-]

Many thanks for taking the time to put that together, it helps enormously.