Well, when you’re lucky, they’re close. For example, I consider a model like this to be very close:
image.png
and one like this to be kind of marginal
image.png
Obviously, “by the sketches and features” I made, these edges should all be perfect, but in practice it doesn’t work that way. So half the trick of “surfacing” is to get the results you intend from tools that may or may not work that way today.
I don’t work with surfaces often and 99.9% of the time it’s to fix an imported part where I’m just trying to get it to be a solid so I really don’t care much about how it “smooth” it is.
That being said, what is the purpose of making a software that doesn’t make surfaces as one would expect?
The purpose is that SW costs ~$4k, and NX costs ~$20k. Eventually that difference will pay for itself when you have to keep wrestling stuff like this.
Probably going into the weeds here but how does SW “Decide”, “Nahhh, I’m not making this one right/tangent…oh but that one I am.”.
Edit to add: BTW this is information that I wish I never had…now things like this will bother me when in the past I would have blissfully ignorantly have gone on my way thinking "Welp, those two surfaces are tangent…well because that’s the way I drew them >
I don’t know anyone who can really put that in words, but after decades of working with the stuff, you get an intuition. Some things will work fine, and others will stray. The more you expect it to do automatically, the worse the results will be. The harder you force it into a corner, the worse the results will be. You try to set up a situation where the right thing just happens naturally, which is a lot harder than it sounds.
I haven’t used a higher end system in years. So does something like NX et al actually create surfaces as you would expect them to? If so I just can’t imagine someone who does that kind of work sticking with SW. Mold makers, Die makers, plastic guys etc etc. Why on earth would you ever stick with a tool that essentially doesn’t do what you want it to and should do?
That’s a painful learning curve when you start out of the gate with something that won’t work.
Not answering your question as I’m still on the smoothness issue. If you manage to make this piece aren’t you still going to have to piece it with a bunch of other pieces in order to make the Gyroid? Isn’t that going to result in the same smoothness issues although fewer of them? Or is this a case of if you do this area it decides to do it right and a pieced together version is smooth but if you do this piece with six pieces it does it wrong and makes it not smooth?
The more I know the more I realize I don’t know anything
Just my 2 cents, but I dont think there is way to create a PERFECT model in SOLIDWORKS for this kind of complex lattice minimal surface structure. You will have a little bit of imperfection here and there, especially at the joint.
To get a theoretically perfect model, using a mathematical model to generate a mesh might end up being more accurate.
I think in the end it depends on how much “imperfection” you can accept.
I agree, I’m just curious as to why Lucas’s approach is better than doing it the way I was. Again not a surface guy so why would doing the complexity of one surface instead of a more simple single surface six times end up in a “Smoother” end model?
I have no idea what the answer is here which is why I’m curious.
I messed with my model and evaluated it and it off considerably. I’m just wondering if the other approach, for some reason, ends up with less error and or why.
[mention]MJuric[/mention] I am not surface guy too, actually I might be the least experienced guy in here. lol
I started studying surface modeling recently and this gyroid problem is teaching me the limitations of each tool, since I am checking almost every approach. ()
I wanted to check boundary surface with splines as influence curves just because I never used boundary surface like that. (the result would be worse since it is not possible to constraint it with the tangent edges)
Did with regular splines with vertical tangency and fit splines with tangency at the top plane: [attachment=1]image.png[/attachment] [attachment=0]image.png[/attachment]
As [mention]Zhen-Wei Tee[/mention] said, it is not possible to get a perfect model in SW (in Catia/NX neither), but some methods will get closer than others. I guess the best one for this problem is doing it with Filled Surface.
Got the solution from this guy here (he actually is a surface guy lol), he also compared results between Catia and NX and explained them, if you want to check it:
You have to use the open and closed groups with the selection manager.
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Yeah, I am trying that, but when I select the fifth line the software doesn’t allow me to get the sixth… Anyway, I just made it in separate sketches, maybe there was some constraint causing this problem… UU
I think like @matt said there’s probably a steep learning curve in there. I’m sure that one way or the other will give you better results but apparently the only way to know which way, at least with SW, is experience.
Maybe not surprisingly that is not much different than anything else in SW and for the most part one of the more frustrating aspect of the software. Just because you CAN do something in SW does not mean you SHOULD. This is a bit different, and certainly more normal in SW, than other systems I have used where there seem to be far greater limitations on “Doing something you shouldn’t”
It can take years of using the software before you can just look at a model and say “Well you could model that 10 different ways. Five of them will end up with an unstable model that will eventually explode and only one or two will actually be stable and fast.”
In other systems I’ve used it would be more like "Well you could model that in four different ways, only one will explode, two are not the best but still good.
[quote=Lucas post_id=8795 time=1624430367 user_id=809]
I am trying to make this model, but no matter what I cannot select all the 6 open groups. How did you do it?
[/quote]
I made a little movie to show it. I used the multiple arrow option on the selection manager.
Off topic
Well… this is because if you use rib on cylindrical surface it will cause ZTG
There are lots of workaround, here are some of them:
Change your rib profile to “protrude” in your cylinder
Extrude a square → rib → cut away the square to form cylinder
Use a normal extrude instead of rib, and apply a DxD chamfer
Personally i prefer to stick to “basic” features whenever possible, there are a few features in SOLIDWORKS that is useful in paper but often cause issue if not use properly.
Well, when you’re lucky, they’re close. For example, I consider a model like this to be very close:
: