Need a little help figuring out the proper way to approach this project

[Anonymous]

Ok. So I am admittedly utterly new to the program and really to modeling in general. I watched a few tutorials and did some examples and thought I was ready to work on this project, and it seems I really don't have the understanding to make it work quite right.

What I'm trying to do, is create a model of the lead part of stained glass to be 3d printed. I want it to just be the lines at a certain height and thickness, so that I can fill the centers with resin.

I have a sketch I'm working from. I know how to import that as a canvas and I had been tracing lines, splines, circles, etc over the top. I have a good sketch.

I extruded the lines of my sketch up 5mm, and then took that face and thickened it .75mm symmetrically, and set it to join. Sometimes this worked great, other times it threw errors all over the place due to how it was shaped.

I'm sure there's a simpler way or something I am missing, but I don't have the vocabulary for this program yet to really go searching for the tutorials I need. Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Thanks! This was to be a Christmas present, but I'm really coming down to the wire now.

[TheCADWhisperer]

File>Export and then Attach your *.f3d file here..

[Anonymous]

I won't be back on my computer until after 2am EST (sleep and then 2nd
shift work), but I will do that when I am. Thanks.

[Johnc911]

Here is a fun way to do it, but beware this is NOT best CAD practice and I'm only suggesting this for making a Christmas ornament. Forget all this when you do "real" CAD work.

Make a sketch on a plane. Draw your line segments. Make sure all of the lines intersect all of the other lines on the sketch cleanly (no overlapping). These will be the lead runs. See picture.

After sketch is done, enter T-splines and create pipe. Select the entire sketch and select your lead thickness.

Most likely, the T-spline will not solve correctly, so run an auto-repair body.

Exit T-splines, and you have your lead frame. See picture.

Again, this is quick and dirty. 

[TrippyLighting]

@Johnc911 what do  you mean with “real” CAD work ?

[Anonymous]

Ok! So, this is a mess, I'm sure. I had the whole sketch neat and everything attached, but when everything was extruded and thickened, that made for some really ugly gaps and corners (some of which I'm still fixing) so I've been moving them around just to make the frame look nice, even though it isn't probably good practice.

Thanks for the help!

[Anonymous]

Here it is, pre-extrusion.

[TrippyLighting]

Your spline curves have way too many spline control points! 

Most of the splines need only 1 or two more control points in addition to the start/end point. Fine-tuning should be done with the tangent handles.

Then also, you my want to consider break ing this into several sketches, or once done wit an area use the "Fix" constraint on this splines that wont be touched anymore. This will allow you to edit new splines much more smoothly. It's pretty sluggish right now.

[Anonymous]

Like I said, utter newbie. Good to know. Thank you. And yeah, it is very sluggish.

[Anonymous]

This is really close to what I'm looking for. To work well though, it kind of needs to be rectangular pipe. It also twists often near where bits intersect.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

here is an example of what tt mentioned:

here is an example of what @TrippyLighting mentioned, an interplay between the position of the control points and their length and/or inclination of the tangent handles.

günther

[TrippyLighting]

HA!

Great minds think alike. I started in that exact same area ... but then did not save. So much for this "great" mind 😉

[Johnc911]

@TrippyLighting Lol that’s a good question. Maybe a poor choice of words. What I was trying to convey is this is kind of a hack because it relies on repair body, creates a geometry with potentially very messy topology, and creates a body that isn’t clean curvature and can’t be easily extended later. 

But yes it’s definitely real CAD. 

[TheCADWhisperer]

Not sure if you will run into trouble as you continue with this idea - but see Attached.

Oops, I hadn't seen your Extrusion with Thicken.

Definitely clean up those Splines.