Wrap a pattern on a complex surface

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I'm new in Fusion 360 and I would like to wrap a pattern on a "complex" form.

I know about the sheet metal but this is not working for my project.

Does anyone have an idea?

Many thanks in advance

[TrippyLighting]

@seth.madore Thanks for chiming in. Looks like we've lost the customer.  Will commence if @Anonymous  returns.

[Anonymous]

Ok.

Thanks Peter for your help and Seth for your comment.

[g-andresen]

Hi,

Just a small hint,
the mark "accepted solution" should appear on those posts that have given clues to the solution. This way, future readers can benefit from it.

günther

[TrippyLighting]

@g-andresen I've unmarked that answer as the solution now.

@Anonymous you can mark several posts as solutions to your question. However, before you do, I'd like to ask whether or not you are still interested in an explanation on how this can be accomplished with 3D modeling software I am not going to create a video tutorial if you are not interested.

The vid would compare workflows in ZW3D, Blender, and Fusion 360 and how different this would be done in those software packages.

I personally would like to see you succeeded. The entire artwork of this project lies in one of the 2D screenshots you posted in the beginning, the beautifully crafted curve that defines the shilouette of the vase and the intricate pattern.  I simply provided the skills to execute but I feel that you provided artwork and I'd be curious what other wonderful ideas are floating around in your head!

[Anonymous]

Hi Peter,

I understand that "accept solution" button was a bit quick (from me) after all our messages.

Sorry about that.

Let me explain which research I've done last week.

As I said I'm from 2D as a graphic designer.

3D is totally new for me.

In October when I had to choose a 3D program I thought that Fusion 360 was "the one" for the project I have in my mind. As you can imagine my project isn't really a vase with pattern on the surface but the approach is similar.

After few months learning Fusion, I was surprise that I wasn't able to define how to create it.

Simply a complex pattern on a surface.

This is where you arrived!

You said that my project was ambitious...

If I summarize briefly (don't get it wrong ;-))

Blender was easier to create pattern but no .step at the end.

A mix between ZW3D and Fusion is possible but licence is expensive...

I thought is not possible... I'm not the first one to want a pattern on a surface!

Then I thought about all those new expensive buildings (Qatar, Doha,...) with organic shape and game between solid, light, curves... should have been done with CAD program.

And last week I discovered this tuto

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEsn12tqtkY

Yes, I know, this isn't Fusion but Rhino.

This approach is much more like what I'm looking for ... paneling (and possibility .step at the end).

And they also have this huge world of Grasshopper.

Maybe, again, I'm wrong... I don't know!

I have to test it.

What do you think? If you have an opinion 😉

Regards.

[TrippyLighting]

Rhino, particularly in combination with Grasshopper is a great modeling tool!

But be aware that it isn't parametric, or not nearly to the degree modern CAD tools are.

That is different if you work with grasshoppers procedural modeling tools, which heavily rely on parameters.

If I did not already have a host of modeling applications on hand I'd probably have a license of Rhino by now.

For this type of modeling Rhino is a better choice than Foison 360. You can still develop the CAM tool paths in Fusion 360 as its CAM abilities are more developed than what can be used with Rhino.

BTW, the final model I created in ZW3D, and once I knew what tools to use it was indeed dead easy to do. It handles large amounts of geometry with ease.

Unfortunately, I have to say the Fusion 360 team is focussing so strongly on the Mechanical Design market, that a lot of creative modeling tools have not been developed.

[Anonymous]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your last message.

That's it... I'm now learning Rhino.

I don't really understand your story about full or not full parametric but seems that to be completely parametric I need to use Grasshopper 😉

I'm going to bounce back from what you said in your previous post. Of course I went to see what you are doing.

As you said you  like my patterns and curves, I could imagine some of them for your project.

Could be challenging and interesting project 😉

Let me know and send me what you want.

By the way, my name is Laure

[Intuos5]

 What @TrippyLighting means is by Rhino not being parametric is that you cannot edit the vase's silhouette by changing a dimension value like you can in Fusion by double clicking on the dimension value or by going to the parameters window. You would need to either change this manually or use Grasshopper, which I would recommend for this. Small tip: to make quicker iterations, enable the profiler widged in the Grasshopper preferences. This shows how long it took to compute the result and may allow you to test alternative methods to shave off some computation time.

[TrippyLighting]

As far as I understand, in Rhino, if you would want to change the shape of the base surface, you'll have to redo everything as it does not keep a history. I am not 100% sure about that though!

[Intuos5]

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@TrippyLighting wrote:

As far as I understand, in Rhino, if you would want to change the shape of the base surface, you'll have to redo everything as it does not keep a history. I am not 100% sure about that though!

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Without Grasshopper you are partially right, it is partially history based meaning that you can edit curves from which surfaces were built and surfaces would update accordingly. This editing is limited to translation, scaling and rotation. Commands that contain history can be used to edit their history, for instance a fillet can be edited by going into the fillet command and hit edit that way you can change radii. 

Unlike Fusion, you cannot just go ahead and edit a sketch by drawing a new profile and expect everything to update, it won't. In the case you need to change more than just curve CV positions you would need to remodel the entire thing. So it's best practice to keep a set of input curves as back-up. You can also create new curves from existing surfaces, but that's still manual work.You can match curves to have a history based continuity, but you don't have access to constraints (e.g. perpendicular, tangent, co-linear relations).

Grasshopper provides one solution, but it does not have the exact same components as there are commands in Rhino (e.g. Sweep 2 rails does not have curvature continuity options in Grasshopper). This can, if I'm not mistaken, be scripted into a custom component based on Rhino common functionality. Unfortunately, when I asked about this on the forums there was no answer to this specific component.

In the end especially when you traverse into Nurbs CV editing you'll be entering manual direct modeling territory.

E: In my opinion, Fusion would be way more powerful if it were to catch up to Alias in terms of modeling commands and if it were to receive deformations. There are but few applications that cather towards high-end parametric surface modeling and Fusion could reach quite far (although again, not sure how it could implement Nurbs surface CV editing, would be nice tho!)