Mirror image editing. What is best practice?
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Having just watched the Dave R video on doing angled mortises, it brings up this question.
It is real common in many models to have the situation identical to what Dave is dealing with when he models the tusk tenon in the table stretcher for its wedge, first at one end, then the other.
Since the stretcher is symmetrical about its center, doesn't it seem as if we should, being efficient modelers, model only one half of it until we are all done with editing and detailing, then be able to command for an auto-joined whole?
I know of no extension that would give us this capability. Anyone?
And then there is this possibility, as an operation. Symmetric editing. In Dave's example of doing the mortises in the stretcher's tusk tenon, mightn't it be nice if we could place a plane of symmetry in the stretcher, and then have all our editing on one end reproduced in the other?
And to go further, it would be nice to be able to do those edits with two-way mirroring, as well. I recently built a copy of a Stickley cocktail table, which has a lower shelf that is essentially one big stretcher board, with two tusk tenons at each end. With two-way mirror editing, I could chop all four of my wedge mortises by simply operating on one tenon.
Are such tools available now?
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@unknownuser said:
and then have all our editing on one end reproduced in the other?
Move Rotate a copy component then edit the original (or the copy) don't make the trick?
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I'm not sure what Pilou is describing.
Some people would draw only half the stretcher, make it a component, copy and flip to make what looks like the other half. Then when you edit one and put in the mortise for the wedge, it will appear on the opposite end. That results in two components representing a single piece of wood. If you want an accurate cutlist, you have to do some gymnastics to get the geometry all in one bottom level component.
Perhaps the easiest way would be to collect the two or four components into one parent component and explode the child components. I showed that for a three way sort of symmetry when I drew the shelf on a small round table in a video tutorial
You could also draw half of the stretcher and put in the mortise. Copy the geometry, flip it and join that to the original. Then erase the seam line. Make that a component and you're finished.
Neither of these require a plugin.
I've used both of these methods on some models. But it depends on what else is going on in the model and what is less work. In the case of the tutorial videos I do, it also depends upon what I want to show.
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The mirrored component is used by people very often, especially if there is a lot of identical modeling, which you don't want want to do twice, and be able to update in tandem. You can hide edges where the halves meet. For simpler shapes keeping two components may not be worth the added complication.
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Indeed, Peter. It also depends upon what you need to get out of the model when finished. It wouldn't be all that useful to have a cutlist showing halves or quarters of parts when you need the whole thing.
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