[Plugin][$] Curviloft 2.0a - 31 Mar 24 (Loft & Skinning)

lapx · 26 Aug 2011, 03:57

I've tried it as well. Thanks Fredo for such a wonderful tool. Can you get it to maintain a sharp edge? I noticed it round the corners. Would be nice to have this as an option if available.

clmene · 8 Sept 2011, 13:56

only amazing ....

TrisQ · 9 Sept 2011, 03:05

Fredo, this tool is brilliant. Thank you so much. I am using it for 3D Printing, and the one issue I am struggling with are "holes" in the shells, that make the resulting STL files cause trouble in the further printing process. Do you have any advice on how to avoid such tiny holes, or what situations to avoid that are prone to causing them? Thanks, TrisQ

TIG · 9 Sept 2011, 09:06

@trisq said:

Fredo, this tool is brilliant. Thank you so much. I am using it for 3D Printing, and the one issue I am struggling with are "holes" in the shells, that make the resulting STL files cause trouble in the further printing process. Do you have any advice on how to avoid such tiny holes, or what situations to avoid that are prone to causing them? Thanks, TrisQ
When you make complex geometry in code [and sometimes by hand] tiny tolerance issues result in microscopic holes. If your initial geometry is too small this can be more prone. Sketchup/OpenGL can't create faces <~1mm [0.01sq"] but they can exist later - so making something perhaps x10 the final size and scaling it down later by x0.1 will avoid many problems.
There is an excellent tool by Thomthom - 'Solid Inspector' - which highlights 'errors' in your near-solid groups and lets you see where they are, so you can fix them. Look in the Plugins Index [big red button above here] - http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=250026#p250026 > http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=267832#p267832

jgb · 9 Sept 2011, 12:42

I found in some complex skinning that CL may either not skin, or will partially skin, or twist the skin, or seem to work (black pre-skin looks OK then an empty group results), or in rare cases, leave tiny gaps as you have experienced. But when I do these complex skins in sections, then later explode the multiple results, CL does work quite well, most of the time.

Also reducing the complexity of the guide curves helps a lot.

Perhaps you could do your CL skins in sections to see if that helps.

jgb · 9 Sept 2011, 12:54

While I am looking at this topic, I'd like to add a suggestion for Fredo to ponder.

Fredo; is there any way you could be a bit more specific when CL finds an error in the selected guide curves? Right now, if CL cannot form a skin, it colors the guide curves, but there is no indication of what caused the error, which 95% of the time is a tiny gap somewhere. Otherwise it usually is a tiny extra fragment/double line in the selection.

Fragments are relatively easy, but time consuming, to find, so a clue as to where it is would help a lot.

Tiny gaps almost always require a near total redraw of all the line segments, so any indication where the gap actually is would be tremendously useful.

mac1 · 9 Sept 2011, 14:32

jgb
have you tried this http://www.smustard.com/script/StrayLines

jgb · 9 Sept 2011, 15:45

@mac1 said:

jgb
have you tried this http://www.smustard.com/script/StrayLines

I think I looked at this some time ago, and found it not quite suitable in several, but common to me, occurrences. It works well with lines, but I had too many "no finds" when 2 or more vertexes of existing faces had a "no-face" micro gap between them. Maybe I used it wrong, dunno; too long ago.

I will try it again; thanks.

mac1 · 9 Sept 2011, 16:17

@jgb said:

@mac1 said:

jgb
have you tried this http://www.smustard.com/script/StrayLines

I think I looked at this some time ago, and found it not quite suitable in several, but common to me, occurrences. It works well with lines, but I had too many "no finds" when 2 or more vertexes of existing faces had a "no-face" micro gap between them. Maybe I used it wrong, dunno; too long ago.

I will try it again; thanks.

Applying multiple times helps some times and of course it does one seg at a time ,so you can make a stray line shorter and shorter
There are programs with filters that allow you to close close vertices based on a tolerance you input. Meshlab comes to mind but would not recommend you use. Check out ThmoThoms clean up since it may have a similar function. You may need to contact him to find out how to modiy code if it uses a fixed tol

ivreich · 14 Sept 2011, 04:46

Soft Diagonals Feature?

Hi Fredo

Any plans to allow Curviloft to generate meshes with soft diagonals? This will enable Curviloft meshes to be edited with thomthom's new quad face tools (if i'm not mistaken)

Cheers,

Joel

thomthom · 14 Sept 2011, 07:43

@ivreich said:

Soft Diagonals Feature?

Hi Fredo

Any plans to allow Curviloft to generate meshes with soft diagonals? This will enable Curviloft meshes to be edited with thomthom's new quad face tools (if i'm not mistaken)

Cheers,

Joel

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=39442&start=0#p348519

ivreich · 14 Sept 2011, 13:42

@thomthom said:

@ivreich said:

Soft Diagonals Feature?

Hi Fredo

Any plans to allow Curviloft to generate meshes with soft diagonals? This will enable Curviloft meshes to be edited with thomthom's new quad face tools (if i'm not mistaken)

Cheers,

Joel

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=39442&start=0#p348519

ahhh woops. my bad. didn't see that.

j

jgb · 14 Sept 2011, 14:40

Posted in another of my threads, this is slightly edited version.

Curviloft; when it fails to form a surface (as part of a solid construction), even though it shows a black pre-form surface, still generates an empty, or perhaps an almost empty group that SU interprets to be as a non solid. Solid Inspector will correctly say it finds no errors, but SU will not see it as a solid. And if you try to re-do that failed surface, you get another empty group.

The only way out, is if you know you do have a valid solid after a Curviloft fail, but SU says not, then edit the solid and do a sweeping left select to select everything. Using TT's selection tools, select only groups, and there it is. Just hit the <delete> key to get rid of it. You cannot select just that empty group. If you have other valid groups in that selection, then deselect them first.

Fredo.... Could you please do something about NOT creating an empty group when CL fails to form a surface?

fredo6 · 14 Sept 2011, 17:21

@jgb said:

Fredo.... Could you please do something about NOT creating an empty group when CL fails to form a surface?

Thanks for signaling this problem. I will indeed fix it.
Do you have an example of a model where it fails?

@ivreich said:

Any plans to allow Curviloft to generate meshes with soft diagonals? This will enable Curviloft meshes to be edited with thomthom's new quad face tools (if i'm not mistaken)

I have plans!
Note that it will slightly slow down the generation of the faces however.

Fredo

jgb · 15 Sept 2011, 14:15

I will try to duplicate the problem, because I modified the object in that area since that happened, but if I can't I will post next time it happens.

But when you say you will fix the problem... which one; the fail to form a surface when a black face does pre-form, or the empty group when that happens???

EDIT ---------------

Fortunately the problem box model still had the empty group problem when I reversed my changes.

You are looking at the open face from beneath and inside the box structure. That box was a clean solid but I had to change the angle slightly on the 2 end faces (4 faces total). 3 of the faces remained intact, 1 face vanished. I selected its' 4 edges but the SU "Face" command would not form the face.

Then I re-selected the 4 edges and used CL "Skin". The black preform appeared with only a single face. But when I clicked finish, it disappeared and nothing showed. I tried a few times, but same result. So I just drew a diagonal and the surface formed with 2 triangles. When I exited the object, SU said it was not a solid. SI said it was a solid. I had this problem before with an embedded group, not knowing why it happened, but I knew now how to fix them.

So I went back into edit mode, and did a left sweep select, then a TT Select "groups". and there they were, several empty groups outlining my 4 edges. When I hit <del> and exited, SU said I had a solid.

I did a CL skin on the posted model but left the empty group intact for you to analyze.

Empty Group on 1 inside face.

fredo6 · 15 Sept 2011, 21:29

I see the empty group. It is true that it is not easy to detect.

At least I can try to prevent empty groups to be created (except if the face disappears afterwards).

Playing with the 4 edges, I could reconstruct the face, whether the empty group was present or not, with pre-selection or manual selection. The mystery remains why the face was not generated or vanished.

Fredo

jgb · 15 Sept 2011, 22:58

@unknownuser said:

I see the empty group. It is true that it is not easy to detect.

At least I can try to prevent empty groups to be created (except if the face disappears afterwards).

Playing with the 4 edges, I could reconstruct the face, whether the empty group was present or not, with pre-selection or manual selection. The mystery remains why the face was not generated or vanished.

Fredo

The "Black Face Forms - No White Face formed" has happened many times before. It seems more prevalent when I try to form a flat face that would not face via the SU face command. But other curves have generated a "Black Face - no White Face" as well, not just flats. But in many of those cases if I do the curve in 2 or more sections, it works.

fredo6 · 21 Sept 2011, 21:49

NEW RELEASE: Curviloft 1.2a - 21 Sep 11

IMPORTANT: you need to install LibFredo6 4.2 (or higher). With this version of LibFredo6, the ZLoader__Curviloft.rb is no longer necessary.

This release includes the generation of pseudo-quads for usage by the new QuadFaceTools by Thomthom.

The surface is generated out of quads with a diagonal which is Soft and Smooth.

Because there always 2 ways to triangulate a quad, Curviloft offers both options.

This release also prevents to get an empty group when something goes wrong in the generation of the geometry. This problem was signaled by jgb (see this post).

See main post for download

Fredo

thomthom · 26 Sept 2011, 07:24

Very nice Fredo.
I'll be looking into the revised definition of a Quad this week. I like your suggestion.

(Btw, I see that the preview still display black meshes - you know that SU8 now makes use of view.drawingcolor, yes?)

fredo6 · 26 Sept 2011, 09:19

@thomthom said:

:thumb:
Very nice Fredo.
I'll be looking into the revised definition of a Quad this week. I like your suggestion.

I will release an update with

Border: Soft + Smooth
Diagonals: Soft + Smooth + Hidden

@thomthom said:

(Btw, I see that the preview still display black meshes - you know that SU8 now makes use of view.drawingcolor, yes?)

I know, but for Curviloft, I'll keep Black anyway (due to the visual matching with the various colors of the lines).

Fredo