Patch Environment Design Help - Guitar Neck

[oldtbone55]

Hello Out there,

I've been working in the Sculpt environment on a guitar neck but ran into some issues and am now trying to design it in the  Patch environment. I'm actually hoping that I can get some of it done in Patch and then switch to Sculpt for the finishing touch's. I've been able to create the surface bodies for most of the neck and headstock but there is an area where they join that needs to transition smoothly and I don't know if it can be done in Patch. The area is on the underside of the neck where the headstock and neck meet (it's called a volute). How should I move forward from here? I've attached my file.

@jeffstrater

@cekuhnen

@Anonymous

[cekuhnen]

@Anonymous

"The drawing would not "feel" right in a player's hands but the method is getting us closer to the ideal."

I have no idea about guitars so I was just guessing 😉

[oldtbone55]

@cekuhnen, WOW! and thank you for those videos. I've just looked at them quickly and there is a lot of information there for me to digest. It will take me some time to understand everything that you did in them. What you achieved in those videos is exactly what I was looking for. Yes, my t-spline is a real twisted piece of work. Something a lot simpler is what I should have been striving for. I'll probably have a few questions for you after I've gained a better understanding of your videos. Been really busy helping to do some renovations at my daughter and son-in-law's condo before they move in. Sometimes it's better when you don't know how to do anything.

Thanks Again.

[cekuhnen]

@oldtbone55

No worries - it is not the case that I learned all this over night 😉

[oldtbone55]

@cekuhnen@, @Anonymous,

---

@cekuhnen wrote:

@Anonymous

"The drawing would not "feel" right in a player's hands but the method is getting us closer to the ideal."

I have no idea about guitars so I was just guessing 😉

This is really a subjective thing. What one player might find comfortable another might not. There are many variations of neck profiles (C, D, V, soft V, hard V etc) available (talking electric guitars) because not every guitar players hands are exactly the same. I believe @Anonymous may be referring to an acoustic guitar neck which may be different than the electric. This exercise is really to determine how to best achieve the smoothest transition from the neck to the headstock (as well as the neck to the heel) and not about individual preferences. That will have to be left to the designer and his design intent.

Cheers!

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[jeff_strater]

This thread is amazing!!  I haven't had a chance to check back in all week, and just saw all the updates.  Thanks, @cekuhnen, @SaeedHamza, @TrippyLighting, @oldtbone55, for contributing such great material to this thread.  I'm learning a lot from you all.  And the results for the guitar neck are looking good.  This is how this forum is supposed to work, nice to see this level of collaboration.

Jeff

[cekuhnen]

@jeff_strater You are welcome

[oldtbone55]

@Anonymous.starter You're Welcome Also. It really is awesome to see what can be accomplished when people help each other. If you guys were around where I lived the beer would be on me.

I salute you all!

[oldtbone55]

@cekuhnen, @jeff_strater, @Anonymous, @TrippyLighting, @SaeedHamza

Hi folks, here's an update. Attached is the headstock to neck transition that I've been able to create using lofts and rails. It's not perfect but it is close enough to the shape I wanted. After thinking about it for a while I decided to change my approach to do this. I deleted some of the curved sketch lines in the headstock and closed the top and bottom sketch off with a straight line. I then created rails for both the bottom and top of the headstock based on the curvature that I wanted to join it to the neck. These rails were created on the same plane as the sketches for the top and bottom of the headstock. I created four rails sketches, two for the top and two for the bottom, joined them from the headstock to the neck profile and then lofted the face of the neck profile to the face of the headstock (having previously lofted the top surface of the headstock to the bottom surface) and Voila, I got my transition. Checked it using Zebra analysis and I think it's not bad but I'm no expert.  I've attached my file for your amusement. Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

.....a big thank you for all the help and a big shout out to Clauss and Jeff for their great videos.

[Anonymous]

@oldbone55 If you want to play with it, you can do the loft in sculpt as well. After playing with both I like the parametric feature of model space better as it makes it quicker to change neck profiles for each customer. I am behind on this thread as I have been away from my computer for a week. I'll catch up in a couple of days.

[oldtbone55]

@Anonymous, glad to hear from you. Yes, you can play with this by changing the curvature of the lofting rails to suit. I agree, the model environment makes more sense to work in if you're making changes on a regular basis and it's not a one off. I believe you can also work in the patch environment while still having parametric modeling. I'm now wondering if fine tuning can be done using t-splines in the sculpt environment. Unfortunately, the sculpt environment isn't parametric. Something I'll have to work on once I get the heel portion of the neck finished. Oh well, what fun would it be if it wasn't a challenge.

[cekuhnen]

@oldtbone55 you are most welcome. when ever you have a question or hit a bump include me in the thread via my name so I can swing by and check it out.

[oldtbone55]

@cekuhnen, @jeff_strater, @TrippyLighting, @PhilProcarioJr, @Anonymous

Here's my latest update. It was a bit of a struggle but I was able to complete the neck to heel transition. It's not exactly what I want but I've learned a whole bunch of stuff so now I can fiddle around with the shape of the transition by changing the curvature of the rails as well as the actual heel size. Something interesting about creating the curvature at the transition. When you draw the curve between the neck profile and the heel, even though it may look like you're joining the two points correctly it's very easy for the curvature to loop around and do some crazy acrobatic feats. If you want to make sure that the curvature is staying on the right plane between the two points, first create a sketch line between the two points. I call this the "rail guide". Then, create a new construction plane using "plane at angle" on this line. This gives you an angle plane between the two points you want to link. After that, create a new sketch on this plane, use the "project-intersection" command and select the "rail guide" as your intersection point. Now when you draw the curve, the contour will follow the exact angle of the "rail guide" and keep your curve in the right place. I've attached my latest file for your amusement. Feedback is always appreciated.

Are we getting closer?

[oldtbone55]

I'm working on a second version of the neck to heel transition but have run into a problem. When I loft and include the rails the loft isn't following all of my rails. I'm not getting the 'rails do not intersect' error. The two outside rails are not being followed, only the center one. I'm thinking that since the two outside rails don't intersect the heel at the corner this may be the problem but I'm not sure. If anyone has any idea why this is occurring it would be great to hear back from you. File attached.

@cekuhnen, @jeff_strater

[jeff_strater]

@oldtbone55,

Looking better, definitely.  That particular transition I have found to be really difficult...

The one thing I might add is a fillet along the sharp edges of that transition:

from:

to:

I had to do that as a variable radius fillet to get it to go.

For your second question, I think this is a problem with point mapping, along with some rail curves that are a bit of a challenge for Loft to follow.  The loft, in fact, does follow the rail curves exactly, it's just hard to see because the curvature is so high in those areas:

you can tell better if you do a section analysis:

I think that this loft is not going to produce what you want, with these rails.  You can adjust the point mapping in the loft command, but the real problem is you have that very sharp corner in the one profile, and are lofting to a semicircle in the other.  I would try moving the outside rails so that one end starts from that sharp corner, and see what that gets you:

Jeff

[oldtbone55]

@Anonymous.starter thanks very much for your feedback. I agree, the hard lines on the back of the headstock did need a fillet to soften the profile. I would like to add that I also tried creating a fillet on the neck to heel transition in my original neck drawing from my previous posting and it was rounding the corner at the bottom of the heel where the rail intersects the heel corner. I also tried using the variable radius but I'm not really familiar with this command and wasn't getting any results. You've also confirmed my suspicions that the neck/heel transition was occurring because of the sharp corner at the heel. I didn't have this problem in my original drawing as my rail intersected this corner. Do you think that the transitions can be further refined in the sculpt environment with t-splines or would placing several contour rails and then radius them to give me a good curved profile?

Thanks Again.

[oldtbone55]

@jeff.starter, Fixed the heel problem as suggested and everything worked fine. I'm trying to create a fillet on the headstock transition where you did but I keep getting an error message. I used the variable radius as I didn't want it to affect the end points. How did you get it to work for you? Did you create a negative number for the second variable? Attached is the updated file with revised heel transition as well as a screen shot of the variable radius error message.

Thanks.

@cekuhnen

[jeff_strater]

Well, @oldtbone55, @Anonymous, you guys inspired me to try again today.  I spent some time trying to model this transition.  The more I hack away at this, the more I am convinced that this is really hard geometry to get right.  I took a couple of shots at it - one using solid loft, and one using TSplines.  Neither are right, but both are better than I have done in the past.

I fear that this particular 3 cubic inches of wood is going to become my own white whale if I'm not careful.  I think it was @Anonymous that said that this is easier to achieve with a good wood rasp than with a CAD product...

dang...  I had recorded a nice 10 minute screencast explaining all this, but I killed Screencast in doing so.  I may try again later.  But, the model is attached.  There are two approaches embedded in this one model.  One with solid Loft, and one with TSplines.

Jeff

[jeff_strater]

BTW, this is how I spent part of my afternoon - on the deck, in Fusion, with my Epiphone Les Paul upside down in front of me:

[jeff_strater]

finally got a shorter version of the video recorded without crashing Screencast:

Jeff

[cekuhnen]

@jeff_strater@oldtbone55@Anonymous

Jeff the transition you created is problematic because of unresolved secondary surfaces (hard edges).

The transitional surface between the stem and head should ideally in this case be made when also all secondary surfaces

of the head (filleted edges) are set.

Then it is a matter of blending between them. This also means that the stem needs to have more then 2 profile.

In the end you will have 6 profile edges from surfaces to blend into.

I am hitting the bed now but will show the my model tomorrow with a screen cast.

encountered multiple bugs this night so I gave up - tired and time to sleep.