[Plugin][$] Curviloft 2.0a - 31 Mar 24 (Loft & Skinning)
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Finally had the chance to re-post this. The "Ole' Battleax" preempted my yesterday.
The purpose of this post is to show Fredo where Curviloft creates excess lines and faces within a relatively simple low poly contour.
The SKP contains 2 bulkheads (out of 12) from my large cargo Airship concept.
The AFT Bulkhead was one of the more complex ones, so I did it first.
It was a complex set of steps to create a curved fillet between the bulkhead and the hard carbon fiber aerodynamic skin. The curved fillets serve 3 main purposes.
Spreading the flight loads from the hard skin to the bulkhead,
Forming a smooth rounded corner where the helium bags meet the structure when filled, and
Forming a channel for the helium between bags and compressed He storage tanks.It requires over 15 steps (in 6 major steps) to create a bulkhead, and the Curviloft skin fillets. Typically a bulkhead will require 30 Curvilft skins, plus a pile of manual development. It now takes over a full day to do one, but 7 of the 12 are the same, so I only have 6 to do. But there are also 13 different additional longitudinal frames to do in a similar fashion.
If Curviloft could optimize the face/line generation, then it would take half that time.
And it is NOT just the esthetics of the curve at issue here, In many cases, especially in this model, there will be intersections and cuts to formed surfaces where other parts of structure and systems cross or join. Because SU's Intersect creates significant tiny line fragments, co-linear lines, and co-planar faces especially where curves intersect, reducing the CL lines and face count becomes critical because it takes hours to fix that mess.
In 2 cases in this model alone, I have scrapped parts after it was impossible to fix and tried again, several times. In one case, forming a solid from several intersections of curves, even Solid Solver threw up
and totally blew up the object. It took 3 full days to recreate it and make solid manually. 
The bulkhead process is detailed in the SKP, so please use LAYERS to see each one, with annotations.
There are 2 bulkheads shown, and one, the aft bulkhead is shown step by step how it was created. The examples (#1 - #5) are not exactly as I did the model, as that bulkhead was almost completed when this post first came up. Most of the contour definition lines had been deleted, so I had to partially recreate the initial steps; however #6 and the fwd bulkhead ARE taken directly from the airship model.
The FWD bulkhead is in RAW condition, equivalent to example #5. Its shape and size are far more consistent with most of the rest of the bulkheads than is the Aft bulkhead.
The other issue of "Contour Inspector" to highlight sources of generation errors will be addressed later when I (WILL) get another major problem.
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I had a quick look at the model and the steps.
It appears that most of the problems (those highlighted in red) are related to the "equalization" of contours to avoid small segments, collinear edges, etc... As said, Curviloft takes as a constraint all vertices of the contours.To cleanup the contours, you could:
- visualize the vertices with FredoTools::MarkVertices
- simplify the contours with Curvizard::Simplify, which will remove collinear edges, small segments when quasi-aligned
I am going to publish soon an additional tool in Curvizard which will smooth the contours. It performs some cleanup and allow getting a better distribution of vertices.
However, nothing magical, it all depends on how accurate you wish to keep the contours, so that a global clean up would be difficult.
Below is a quick attempt to simplify the contours in step 5
- first the surface you generated
- second the surface after a "Simplify" of the upper contour
- the same surface with generation of interpolated contours to make it smoother.
Fredo
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Fre-DO! Fre-DO! Fre-Do! Fre-DO! Fre-DO!!!!!!
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Thanks Fredo;
I guess I gotta load and learn your "Tools" plugin.
In this model, I have no intention of making the curves smoother. It is a concept model, and already too detailed from what I had planned. I'm trying to keep the lines count down. It just broached 100,000 and I'm only about 1/3 done. When I approach 350,000 and over, my beast slows down and autosave takes too long for my liking.
But I can see using additional smoothing in some other models.
I have some other curves that caused grief with too many lines & faces. I will attempt to recreate the nose section that was generated in about 5 minutes, but took 4 hours to clean up. The tail section took about double that. That said, it would have taken a week or more to generate each without Curviloft, so I'm not dissing CL; just asking if it can be improved a bit.
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Hi, I am trying to use this great plugin, but i get the errors as shown in the attached jpg. I have followed the instructions but need help.
As suggested I have the following;
C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 8\Plugins- LibFredo6.rb
- LIBFREDO6_Dir_46
- CURVILOFT_Dir_12
Thanks in advance.
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It looks like the same issue that has been covered repeatedly here. You haven't correctly installed the files into the Plugins folder. Correctly installing them includes giving yourself full administrative rights for that folder.
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plugin doesn't work. it's not visible under "tools > fredo6 collection"
can you help me about it?
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@compu said:
plugin doesn't work. it's not visible under "tools > fredo6 collection"
can you help me about it?
If you glance back through some of the recent posts in this thread, you'll see that many users can mis-install such tools, or forget to install the supporting Lib set that is clearly indicated and linked in the tool's download page.
Another common error - even after successfully installing the required files and subfolders of files etc - is not realizing that some tools like this need an initial activation as an Extension under the Preferences dialog.
This should then include it in any menu items etc; however, you might need to also activate its toolbar under the View > Toolbar entry to see/use that... -
Fredo,
Curviloft will simply not skin this contour.
It is (or is almost) flat and very similar to about 30 other contours, that skinned with little or no problem where the contours did not flat face with SU's "Face" function.
I have checked every line for doubles, fragments and gaps (none).
I have redrawn most of the lines endpoint to endpoint, especially at junctions.It will form a face if I manually face it, but not with CL.
Could you please tell me why it fails and how you found whatever error I made in it?
[mod=MODERATOR NOTE:3oodv4kq]Removed unnecessary and tiresome overuse of smilies/capitalization.[/mod:3oodv4kq]
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Joel
You have just managed to contrive a set of almost coplanar edges, and then combine some of them into curves, but then with some that are not... at which CL baulks.
Unsurprisingly!
With a very little adjustment my EEbyRails managed to mesh it - and I freely admit Fredo's tools often has better results than mine do!
My solution works almost instantly - either with the original parts [left] or a more logical/symmetrical split, with an added 'mid-curve' [right].You cannot expect any tool that is in a beta phase, and that is given away freely, to always do what you hope of it - no matter how good it normally performs.
As the original form's author it's up to you to devise a workaround when all else fails.
It took me just a few moments - and of course I care diddly-squat about your project - so surely you could have applied a few of your own brain-cells to come up with a solution to suit your needs...
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You ccan check that the lines are not coplanar with the section tool. My attempt to solve this... (OK, TIG was faster, Unsurprisingly!)
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It is not flat. It contained 3 lonely verts. As TIG mentions you seem to not use this tool correctly on a regular basis.
Proper lofting requires an understanding of the lofting process which is heavily covered in Fredo's videos.
Use of 'breaker' edges are needed at times to let Curviloft know what you are trying to loft.
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For those who do not find the Utilities menu, it has to be activated in the preferences (extensions)...
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Thanks to all, but.......
First of all, the contour is supposed to be flat, but SU Intersect screwed that up a bit. In the JPG there are 3 sections of my Dirigible concept. There are a total of 73 sections, of which 30 center sections are identical. The rest (nose and tail) were formed from a large mesh created by multiple Curviloft constructs, exploded into 1 humongous shell, nose and tail. I then ran flat quad faces (as a group) across and fore/aft through the shells to create the outer skins of each section with intersect. For some really dumb and inexplicable reason, I deleted the intersecting quad faces. I then grouped each section and spread them apart.
Realizing my error, the next day, obviating any undo, I recreated the flat faces by joining the 4 corners of each top and bottom skin. Of the 43 sections, (actually only 21 due to flipped copies) almost all formed flat faces when the lines were drawn. A few pair needed CL, and they formed a single undivided face (left section in JPG) and only one (center section in JPG) formed with 9 facets.
But there were 3 pairs of faces that refused to form using CL. Two (pairs of) faces I constructed manually (not shown). But the one on the right refused to face unless I connected almost every vertex, like Cotty did manually. I really need these faces to be a single flat face because they will have a post process to form the internal web structure. I can't have lines dividing the faces.
Tig, "it took me just a few moments - and of course I care diddly-squat about your project - so surely you could have applied a few of your own brain-cells to come up with a solution to suit your needs..."
Totally uncalled for.... Of course I can solve this by other means, and for the 3 faces I did, in a few minutes. I tried subdividing the contour into 2 or 3 pieces, and apply CL to each. This almost always works, before I do a manual construct.The main reason I posted this problem is for Fredo. CL should NOT refuse to skin a properly connected and clean contour. I know CL has had problems with nearly flat contours, and Fredo looked at this type of failure before when I brought it up here in this forum. It should not matter to CL if the contour looks like the rocky mountains or the prairies. That's what a Beta is for.
Rich; If the vertices were properly co-planar, the face would form as soon as the 2nd vertical line was drawn, as did in the other 40+ sections. I would not need to resort to Curviloft to make the face.
And finally.......
MODERATOR NOTE
Removed unnecessary and tiresome overuse of smilies/capitalization.REALLY??? You will notice that this post contains only a single smiley and 2 all caps....
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@jgb said:
The main reason I posted this problem is for Fredo. CL should NOT refuse to skin a properly connected and clean contour.
Joel,
Curviloft (and TIG's ExtrudeEdgesByRail) can generally skin surfaces when 3 or 4 contiguous contoursare given, not more not less. This is called a "coon".
When the contour is rather continuous, you need to indicate where to break it into these 3 or 4 pieces. This can be done by small breaker segments, as illustrated by Rich, or by the user selecting each and freezing it.
Alternatively, you can use TGI3d which has a much more powerful function to skin continuous 3D contours (and maybe Soap Skin & Bubble and Ferrari).
Fredo
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Tig, Cotty & Rich
You all twigged onto the source of the problem with my contour, exclusive of Curviloft.
You all said I had non co-planar edges, and gave a few solutions to form a face, but none were flat single faces as I needed, as I stated in my original post.
You all missed the obvious......... Bring the vertices into plane.
So, knowing that was the solution, (thanks to you all again) I fixed all 4 pairs in less than 20 minutes.
All I did was delete whatever malformed faces there were, picked a corner that was co-planar with another part of the model, then proceeded, one by one, to move each vertex on the contour perimeter along the green axis to align with that "master" corner. Most were out less than a tenth of an inch, a few as much as an inch.
Then I selected a vertical, "Face" command and a perfect face formed.
(Sorry Mod, couldn't resist! 
)Then to ease my task on the corresponding sections mating face, I clip-copied the face, moved it along green to the "master corner" and used Solid Inspector to tell me exactly what needed fixin'.
That still leaves Fredo with the problem of Curviloft vrs. nearly flat contours.
EDIT: (And I just saw Fredo's reply, sent while I was writing this post, which took me longer to write than the fix took)
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I have tools like 'Project to Plane' that would 'flatten' your slightly non-coplanar edges on to any selected plane [aka 'workplane']. This might be a quick way to 'regularize' your wayward edges ?
Unfortunately, we had all rather assumed that you wanted your original edges to be slightly non-coplanar
Why else might you have made them like that, and then presented them to us like that ?Remember that had all of these edges been coplanar initially, or made so by some adjustment, then no special tools at all would have been needed, because the edges should take a face if one edges is over-drawn, or for more complex forms perhaps if a temporary diagonal [or two] were added...
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@unknownuser said:
You all missed the obvious......... Bring the vertices into plane.
Apparently you did, too, or this would have been finished business long ago.
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@unknownuser said:
Rich; If the vertices were properly co-planar, the face would form as soon as the 2nd vertical line was drawn, as did in the other 40+ sections. I would not need to resort to Curviloft to make the face.
In your original file there was text saying 'It is flat'. It was not flat so I answered that part.
I then showed how to skin this non-planar ring using CurviLoft and breakers.
There is an appropriate time to use
smilies and there is an inappropriate way to overuse them. Please use discretion when you decide to decorate your posts with these.
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