I have a few questions about surface modeling, namely with Alias.
My first question is pretty broad. What is the best way to make a part line? One way I’ve used is to project a line or curve onto a surface and then seperate the two surfaces slightly…but this can be sloppy. Another way is to just use photoshop, but that’s cheating. What are my other options?
The second question is focused on Alias. I’ve had the problem of when I’ve trimmed surfaces multiple times occasionally a surface won’t render. It will be visible as not being templated, and it will quick render, but won’t display in a final render. Any ideas about this, or is it just a hardware/software glitch?
did p/l the same way. divide surfs and tweak a move. for concept render only tho. for parts just the curve would be ok. shop could import the curve and run a tool path for a p/l.
for surface no render, did you check normals? or render stats? kinda recall this. been too long tho.
edit. forgot to add. could create a trough p/l. use curve. extrude u-shape along it. trim as needed. did that once. more trouble than it was worth imo.
p/l - for export to tool cutter software or render/animate?
trim no render - quick fix: try export active to iges then import. if the surf was foreign, i.e. from pro-e/solidworks/etc. that sometimes fixes leaky trims. otherwise, try turning on Revert to 9.0 Tesselation at the top of the render globals, or if that’s checked then up the adaptive min and max for that surf in Windows > Edit > Render Stats. then maybe untrim and check for curves on surf that don’t quite line up with each other or with a boundary edge. the leak passes muster with quick render but not scanline render.
With regards to part line: for now just for rendering, although I would be interested to know how it should be done for export to an engineering program for manufacturing.
Thank you both YKH and Samweis for your ideas on my trim surface. I managed to fix my more immediate problem another way, although not as eloquent, so I will keep your ideas in mind for the next time which surely isn’t too far off.