Need Help Modelling (see attached)

[Lester_Masterson]

Okay. I've been modeling for years, but have never been formally trained, so I just hack away until I get something close to what I need.

 

However, this item is making my head hurt.

 

Does anyone have suggestions on a good starting point to create this connector?

 

I'm sure it involves "box modeling" but have no idea how to start.

 

Thanks

[Antisthenes]

 

you get the idea? draw the skeleton construction curves, a loft, some surface(nurbs for true curves not segments), trims, sweep 2 rail for the top, the fillet the edge and join all together to have a water tight solid, calculate the mass centroid and send to rapid prototype

 

if you had side top front views it would be more accurate

 

i actually finished it but i didn't save oops, only took 11 min max

Edited January 23, 2009 by Antisthenes

[Peter M. Gruhn]

First thing I did was make one arc for the tail and body because I worried about the flow from it into the back of the body.

 

Then draw a line. You'll note that the line in picture 1 has been adjusted here and there after the extrusion in picture 2. Pulled this up a bit, that back some, and change some statuses.

 

I attached the arc to my line the clone copied the shape. Using trim, some vertex well and segment delete I cleaned up each shape so I'd have one arc and one body but with a nice silky flow between them. Strikes me now you could keep them together, use spline... outline on the tail and then clean up.

 

Extrude the body just about that much. This is where you'll want to address you taper and issues. ... Yup, just stuck a Taper modifier in between extrude and Edit Poly and (with some fussing) got the right taper though the edits made after are now wrong. So do yours in the right order.

 

Edit Poly.

 

There was one line on the top face near the highlighted edges there that was going to block the chamfer which is about to come. Used vertex target weld to get rid of that.

 

Then chamfer the edges highlighted and the result of that. Makes the round end. This is not an exact science for me. Do it. Center's too wide. Undo undo. Do first chamfer a little more. Yay, center looks good....

 

Chamfer the top two edges similarly.

 

Chamfer all the outside edges there just a bit just once.

 

Then I was going to make a cylinder for the leg but figured I was going to waste too much time getting the vertices where I wanted them and I already had some vertices where I wanted them. Select the bottom front curve edges. Hold shift down and move them AWAY (roughly to the right here, positive x) to clone those edges and drag new faces with them.

 

Turn angle snap on (what, it wasn't on already?!) and rotate the still selected faces 180 degrees about the Y, up out of the plane like a book page and then back down. Now move them in to place under the body where you see them in picture 3.

 

I had a face in the way that needed deleting. Then Face Create la. Note: the circle has two vertices on the outside edge of the body. The front one is old and good. The new one is not attached to the side of the body. There should be a cut and weld done for integrity's sake but it also may not really matter. Looks like you've got some inset or separation there on yours.

 

Finish up the face creation. (Selecting the Edge and smacking Cap may work well.)

 

Select faces in the circle and bevel until it's good.

 

For the tail, Extrude the right amount then Shell. (Unless you've incorporated it in to the shape in the first place in which case you may need to go back and untaper which should be easy with two applications of select vertices and smack the Y button. Then maybe a bit of move maybe with snap magnet Y in action.)

 

Mine isn't spot on for yours, but it's close enough for a mock up that took less time than this took to write ;-) and should be a viable path for you. If you need it really picky mechanical engineering, do it with solids in ACAD or your favourite other modeler.

[Lester_Masterson]

Thank you so much , both of you. Now I am going to be busy all weekend trying out these techniques