How do I go about modeling this part of a Spyderco Dragonfly knife?

[Anonymous]

Not sure what is the best way is to go about shaping the underside of the handle on this knife.

So far I have tried using Rule Fillet and Create Form>Pipe.

With Create Form I played around with laying a pipe along the edge and shaping it into a cutting tool.

How would the pros go about it?

Thanks,

[HughesTooling · Accepted solution]

Variable fillet should do what you want, screencast below. Thanks for attaching the file it's so much easier to demonstrate with the design.

Mark

[Anonymous]

Hi @HughesTooling

That gets me pretty close. Guessing it was hard to see much detail from the canvas I was working with so I have attached another image of the knife that shows it from a different point of view.

It looks like the fillet that goes around the majority of the handle also continues about half way along the bottom before the fillet changes to that larger section.

Is there a way to stop a fillet part way along a edge?

I tried splitting the body. Creating my fillets and then joining the bodies back together, but it did not look right.

It also looks like maybe the fillet could be the same all the way around and then just the inside edge of the one section of fillet needs to be pulled up.

The image I attached shows the edge I'm talking about pulling up. The edge is blue in color.

Thanks. 

[HughesTooling]

You can pick more than one point along the edge with the variable fillet, you might need one or two more points set at the same fillet as the rest of the edge.

Mark

[HughesTooling]

Something like this, file's attached.

Mark

[Anonymous]

I see now. Did not know i could pick more then one point like that. Seems so simple now, thanks!

[HughesTooling]

One more tip, if you fillet the vertical edges first you can select the whole top face edge as one and add the variable fillet, this give you nicer fillets on the corners where 3 edges meet. File's attached.

Mark

Edit Looks like there's a bug, if you try to edit the fillet the handles move. I've made another thread as a bug report.

[Anonymous]

" if you fillet the vertical edges first you can select the whole top face edge as one and add the variable fillet, this give you nicer fillets on the corners where 3 edges meet. File's attached."

Feeling kind of stupid right now as your above tip seem like it should be easy enough to follow. I'm able to fillet the vertical edges first.

But then how do I select the whole top face edge as one?

I have tried to just click on the face to select all the edges at once but that don't seem to work.

I have gone around the edge and selected all the edges by clicking + shift key but it seem if I have more then one edge selected then the "Variable Radius" option is no longer shown in the drop down menu.

I see in your file it shows 1 edge as selected and of coarse your using a Variable Radius, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to select all the edges as one.

Like I said feeling really stupid that I can't figure this part of it out ha!

Thanks,

[HughesTooling]

Have you got the Tangent Chain option selected?

Mark

[Anonymous]

I did not have Tangent Chain option selected and that of coarse was my problem.

Time for a lunch break ha!

That does look super nice doing it that way. 

Thanks again.

[HughesTooling]

Hi John I made a screencast a while a go to demonstrate fillet edge sets, don't know if you know about them.

Mark