Connect different faces to an object

Helmi

Hi,

i'm trying to model a fan duct that will be 3d printed later on.
This is what it looks like so far.

Unfortunately my modelling skills are rather basic so far. I'm looking for a way to connect the fan mount (the big hole on the right) to the outlet on the buttom and have a well formed duct. Is there any way / plugin to 'morph' from the circle to let's say a rectangle on the bottom to generate a smooth duct?

In the result it should be something similar to this (even if this isn't very good and of course it's not designed by me)

Thanks for helping me out of this

numbthumb

Try Fredo´s Curviloft: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=28586&hilit=curviloft
Or TIG´s Extrude Tools: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=25362&hilit=TIG+extrude

Jean Lemire

Hi Steffi, hi folks.

I see two round openings. Why do you need to go from round to rectangular ?

TIG

Is this what's needed ?
Or must the circular form actually transform in to a rectangle ?

Helmi

Hey TIG,

the second is what i thought would be good first but i couldn't manage to get the object manifold in the result so i wasn't able to print that. I've tried curviloft for that and it worked great. I think my object was the problem.

In the end i tried to simplify it and drawed something like in your first picture this morning which seems to work well.

I'll post an image of the printed part later on but anyway thanks for all your great tips.

@TIG you didn't arrange this pictures just for me, did you?

TIG

Yes

On the question of making a manifold solid...
When you add in the two 'transformations' [as I showed] there will almost certainly be internal faces as 'partitions'.
These will stop a group being seen as 'solid'.

The definition of a solid 'group' is that all of the edges within it must have two faces - no fewer, no more.
So an internal 'partition' face messes us up because some of its edges will have three or more faces.
Also 'flap' faces will have edges with only one face, and a faceless edge obviously doesn't have two faces at all...

It should also contain only faces and their edges to be 'safe'.

Once you've exploded the bits into one collection of geometry and grouped it all, if it doesn't show as a 'solid' in Entity Info, then you need to edit it.
There are scripts that show or attempt to fix such issues - however, in a simple case like this you need to try a few things first - use X-ray mode to see inside and perhaps remove unneeded partitions by erasing their edges that join onto external faces; also you can use the section-tool to cut the object temporarily so you can see inside it, then select+delete internal faces, edges etc: running an 'erase coplanar edges' tool on the results also simplify it. At each step check the Entity Info to see if it reports a 'solid'.