Free Form Troubleshooting

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I have had a plethora of issues today in using Autodesk FreeForm.

It is my first time using the feature and it was very awesome and intuitive to start, but steadily got more and more buggy as I developed my idea. I am basically creating a series of geometric shapes over a plastic tumbler lid with the intent of using replace face to create a really nice textured pattern on my part, similar to the triangle textures on the MX Master mouse.

My first issue was that the program was operating slower and slower. I could tell my custom pattern was too heavy. But I got everything made and in place, and the program was workable.

Then it began to freeze and lockup completely when I tried to delete the edges that I didn't need. The same 3 pieces would not allow deletion without crashing. So I worked em in.

Now my form wont appear in the model (Its greyed out in the navigation menu but I have it set to visible), and I cannot even use replace face if I wanted. This is the main issue i need help with. Additionally, I cannot zoom past a certain level without the program freezing and getting caught loading for 10+ minutes. I also had some overlapping pieces that I managed to delete, but then I draw in new pieces and the program hangs until I shut it down upon creasing the newly created pieces.

Either way, what gives? And how can I lighten the program up so that this stuff will work properly? What was fun at first has turned into a teasing headache. dang you inventor.

Thanks,

Nick

[Xun.Zhang]

Hi Nick,

Replace it the tough piece since Freeform face are always G2 continuous which means you have to replace entire G2 face with a new face which is not logical in theory.

The performance is related how complex the model is, currently, it seems not that tough in my end, would you mind share something more about the hardware?

Thanks! 

[Anonymous]

Hi there.
You are speaking over my head haha but I will read up on G2 to try and understand. I am not a professional in 3D part design, just casual and starting out. I have light amounts of experience.

I was really hoping it was more of a glitch than actually being a complex file. It honestly didn't seem like it should have been acting up as much as it was.
I am working on a brand new machine (new to me, actually I think it's a year old).
Dell Precision 5520
i7-6820HQ @ 2.7GHz.
32GB RAM
Nvidia Quadro M1200 GPU
512GB SSD
DirectX 11
I have another machine as well, with an Nvidia 580m, overclocked i7, and 32GB Ram. I can try it on that machine if you were having no issues.

Thanks so much,
Nick

[Anonymous]

After reading more into G2, etc. I still don't exactly comprehend what you are saying. I guess that G2 surfaces are not in the same realm of solids, so I will find it very difficult to import the surface as a new face for my solid? 

Is that why the surface is greyed out in my model and not allowing me to use it?

What would the recommended most efficient solution be to achieve the desired results?

Thanks,

Nick

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hey all,

I found the solution through trial and error and research. Basically I had mangled the model enough due to my inexperience that I had an error in my freeform when I went to save, and I selected 'Accept' to exit the freeform with an error. From that point on, the freeform was basically becoming more and more unstable, before it was basically unusable.

After that, I just created one from scratch, exiting and saving often, and I tried my best to keep it clean as possible. When I had an error on exit, I would try to identify the problem and fix it before just undoing a few times and trying to exit again.

Finally, I was not able to use the replace face function even though I had a very clean looking freeform, that was edge matched to the surrounding polygonal circle. I had to use the thicken command, selecting only a few faces out of the 100+ at a time, and only thickening between .5 and 3.5mm.

This command's weakness was that it left voids behind much of the new thickened surface, so I had to use the 1. Copy Solid to create a composite and 2. Sculpt (Or something similar I forget) and 3. I had to combine the solids. 

This finally had my beautiful prism-like clear plastic lid looking proper in all its glory. 

Thanks and I hope this helps someone some day!

Nick O.