Making Multiple Solid Bodies from Surface

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

So I'm Trying to make a bike seat for a project I'm working on, and I want it to have it look like a classic Brooks saddle.  I've already created a solid body for the leather (after modifying the surface to what I wanted and thickening it), but now I'd like to use the organic surface of my solid body to create the metal substructure that holds the leather in place.  I basically want to just extrude off of the surface, but I'm not really used to surface modeling at all.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

What I've made so far (sorry the leather grain looks kind of terrible)

And the underside

And this is the metal frame I want to make.  I'll be OK with the rails if I can get the metal supports created.

[innovatenate · Accepted solution]

Hi Adam,

I took a crack at a workflow that you might use to create the metal substructure under the seat. I've made a video that you can review to see it in action.

A short summary of the actions taken in the video are:

I converted the sculpt surface to a B-Rep

I created an zero offset body

I un-stitched the body into separate surface bodies

Deleted some surfaces bodies to clean up

I used some planes to split faces

Deleted the unwanted faces

Finally, I thickened the remaining faces

http://screencast.com/t/2RBWDbjibJn

There are other ways to achieve this result as well. Hope this helps!

[deyop]

Here is one approach.  Convert the TSpline to a solid body when you are satisfied with the shape.  You can then create a sketch with the paths that you would want to move parallel to the form.  Use Split Face to project the curves from the sketch to the face.  That can be used as a path to sweep solid bodies or additional TSpline forms.  Here is an illustration with the concept.

Let us know if that helps.

[Anonymous]

Fantastic help!  Thanks to both of you.  I'll post an updated photo when it's finished.