CREATING A BULGING EFFECT

[toycept]

I'm trying to bulge out (give a pillow effect) to a number of flat areas within a frame. At the same time I need the cored out side to keep a fairly constant wall thickness.... following the pillowed shape from the cored side. I've tried using the dome feature (doming the top surface) which sort of works on some of the flat areas but totally blows apart on other flat areas. But the coring out is problematic. I was able to do it on one or two of the flats by extruding a cut from the cored side using the offset from surface feature and picking the front bulged shape as the surface to offset from. But again, this doesn't work for all the shapes.

Any suggestions on how to achieve this effect. To help visualize what I'm trying to do I've posted a jpeg ... it can be viewed here:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y115/toycept/frame.jpg

Thank you for helping with this one.... I have a feeling there must be an easy way to do this... but I'm missing something. Thanks again.

John

 

[pdybeck]

Use the indent feature. Check the help files. Basically you will create a separate solid body that will be your tooling body. Use the indent feature and select the tooling body to create the desired bulge in your part.

Pete

 

[Theophilus]

I'd agree with Pete. The feature's interface is a bit twitchy--you'll see--but it works well after getting everything set properly.

However, if your problem is in getting the bulge surface (of any kind) in the first place, you'll need a method to do that. Consider a surface fill. Delete (without Patching) the face you'd like to bulge and create one or two curves to guide the fill--with edge types at either contact (probably) or tangent. You can do this with your forming tool and then use the indent feature to push both walls of your molded thickness outward.

Jeff Mowry

http://www.industrialdesignhaus.com

Reason trumps all. And awe trumps reason.

 

[smcadman]

In addition to what was suggested above, if possible, delete the cavity, and shell the model AFTER your bulge is created so you will have a uniform thickness.

Flores
SW06 SP4.1

 

[SBaugh]

Why not a dome?

Regards,

Scott Baugh, CSWP

http://www.scottjbaugh.com

faq731-376

 

[toycept]

Scott.... I had tried the dome feature... it works on some of the areas...but with the areas that have the more complicated splines... the dome wants to connect to each point on the spline... which is causing problems in creating the dome.

I'll try using the indent feature as suggested.... Thanks for your help.

John