free form modelling help?

[TechnicalConsultant]

I am hoping someone can help me out here. I am soon going to be modeling some rather unusual shapes (soap,sweet shapes etc) in unigraphics v18 and was wondering if anyone else has approached this sort of thing before? Tutorials or advice would be very much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

 

[schoryan]

you can use thru mesh curve to build sheets then thicken the sheets. do not extrude extrude wont be uniform like thicken sheet. give me some kinda sketch for your soap and ill write you a tutorial

designer gooroo
catia v5
unigraphics nx
pro-e wildfire
ideas v10
autocad 2004

 

[TechnicalConsultant]

Thanks mate! I'll get the sketch and get back to you,very much appreciated.

 

[Xwheelguy]

If I were going to model a bar of soap, I'd define the top & bottom edges, then the profiles of the largest surfaces. I'd use Ruled Surface to create the short sides & either extrude, sweep or through curves to define the large to & bottom surfaces, ending with curvature continuous blends to soften all the edges. There is a simple tutorial somewhere in UG's documentation or in CAST that uses a similar approach to model the body of a mouse (computer pointing device).

Tim Flater
Senior Designer
Enkei America, Inc.

http://www.enkei.com

 

[ewh]

I have to agree with nkwheelguys methodology. You could also use the resulting intersection of extruding the front, side and top profiles. Many ways to accomplish what you desire.

Thickening sheets won't work for parts that don't have a uniform thickness, such as soap and sweets. UG has gotten much better with creating solid bodies from sewn sheets.