Amazing video! Extremely helpful tips on dealing with problems involving faces and approaching a design like this. The final extrude to the curved face using an offset is super useful. I have never seen this in any other video.
hi, I've got a question. I'm making the fillet on the bottom of the spoiler like you did at 21:27 but I'm getting "inconsistent information in vertex and edge attributes". I'm doing this using my own scan data for my car, what should I go back and check to remedy this?
Hmm, so you were able to thicken the surface to a solid, but get hung up on the fillet on the corner. might want to try increasing the tolerance number when you stitch them. When you use stitch if any of that edge is red and not green it means there is a gap there which would cause a fillet not to work. If that isn't the case there might be a non-tangent section on your surface. Those are the 2 places I would start with.
Thank you so much very informative and understandable video. I hunted for months this type of information for my own carbon parts. I really want to see a video from how you make printable moulds from a body. Sry for my poor english.
Making a 2 part mold in fusion is completely mind blowing to me. I have created and printed a spoiler riser myself but have no idea how to split the design and where the seperation lines would be. Would love to see you do a video on this
Thanks Dave, Let me give it some thought on how to best present it. The draft tool in Fusion does have the ability to build a parting line but something it is best to figure it out yourself for sure.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I appreciate your response. I will have a play with the draft tool. I wish I'd found your channel a long time ago. Excellent content! I think sometimes instead of struggling in CAD to create a mold. It's probably best to make the mold manually from the design. The spoiler extension is such a weird shape I'm definitely gonna see if it's possible in fusion though. Cheers
Dave, I threw this together on the MX5 spoiler. Take a look a360.co/3Ex3nr5 The main idea is to build a block and i used Boundary Fill to remove the spoiler from the block. Then i built my "shut off" surfaces off the edge of the spoiler. Because it curves and wraps around you can see around the corner i made a sharp transition which I usually would avoid. But then I can use that surface as a split tool to split the boundary fill body. Note that I use my split surface along with a 0 offset of the faces of the spoiler as one big surface. Sometimes you can get away without that step but the more tricky the edges the better chance you need to get creative.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign wow. I've just looked at it and you've made it look so simple. Some tools I haven't used yet! You've used the surface tools to split it where you need it 🤯🤯🤯 impressive! Can't wait to try this. Thank you very much 👌
@@davecoggan9619 No problem. I will cover this in a video at some point. Other CAD software that has mold tools like Inventor and Solidworks to this automatically for you(when possible). They try to make these parting surfaces normal to the mold pull direction but that doesn't always work so knowing how to do it manually always helps. The main tool I use is the Ruled Surface because you can have it create a surface toward a direction. So if you want to pull top/bottom you can make a surface ruled toward front/back or left/right. Then build in the corners manually. There are other things to think about like alignment pins and weep holes for extra resin to escape but the sample should at least get you started. Ask any questions along the way!
hello, I just found out about your site and am already extremely grateful for various tutorials. -> I have a question about T-Spline and API: Do you know if it is possible to manipulate T-Spline functions via API scripts? I haven't found anything in the Fusion API documentation yet. Thank you very much
You are welcome! On the API side of things, I have never done anything with forms in API but with a quick search there are some things exposed to the api. If you search the help file for FormFeature or Tspline it will bring up the ability to create freeform bodies. I know from a program site that Fusion does access and create form features from other commands such as when creating a design from a Generative Outcome. It takes a quad mesh and turns it into a form body. I don't know if you can directly work with a freeform body though since it is a "direct" modeling approach I don't know how you would even figure out which vertex/edge/face to select with API. Is there somethin specific you are trying to do?
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks a lot for the quick reply. Yes it is an API task which: 1. imports an STL mesh into Fusion 360 (almost spherical, some dents, etc). 2. imports a T-spline body (exact sphere with n faces, a bit larger than mesh, same origin, almost fit). 3. select all points on the T-spline 4. pull all vertecies onto the mesh to get a surface which can be manipulated (similar as you did with the MX5 Spoiler) The task goes a bit further, but this is roughly the task I am trying to solve.
@@FabianSchollenberger So there is a step that might help you, but i don't instantly know if it exists. In a form under the Utilities there is a Convert option. that convert has a Quad Mesh to Tspline. If you are bringing your mesh into fusion as a quad mesh you might be able to directly convert it to a form without having to do the pull of a form sphere to that mesh. This is sort of how the mesh conversion tool to "organic" works. It does a remesh using quads and then converts those quads to a form. As long as the mesh is quads and as long as it doesn't exceed some upper limit of face count that would be the most straight forward route. I tried using ChatGPT to sort this out but keep getting errors. a few snippets that might point you in the right direction. rootComp.bRepBodies.add() it is telling me this will create a tspline body, but odd its calling it a bRepBodies. calling the previous comp it called "tsBody" it does a startEdit, tSplineBodies.addByQuadMesh and a finishEdit. I think its on the right track but I haven't had a ton of luck with ChatGPT yet for this sort of thing. I do have a video planned showing how to use this for API, but sadly sometimes its harder than just doing the program ;)
Be interesting to see how to use the pull tool on a less flat and more complex shapes like the lip of a front bumper? Or any solutions for that? Thanks! Very informative videos!
I can certainly do that. The greater the curvature the more divisions you will need. So it is important to get the shape how you want it first and probably subdivide with Exact as the option to maintain the shape. I have a sort of odd example I can show where I use Pull inward to a complex mesh shape. I'll give it some thought on which is more practical.
Would be good as I was trying to use the pull tool to get the surface from a front bumper scan I found but it kept going mental and every time it's really unusable! But if you could show how to get a similar effect like you did in the first half of the video using pull to make it match with the mesh surface but for complex curves like front bumpers to make attachable lips that would be cool!
If you wanted to wrap down to the bottom edge of the trunk instead of following the back line of the trunk, how would you line up the edge with all of the curves. Is that just a matter of subdividing and lining up the vertices before doing the pull command?
Yeah you just need enough divisions to match whatever curvature you have. I did an AMG spoiler in this video th-cam.com/video/aUVgqCQrAqI/w-d-xo.html which wrapped around the back a bit more.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Your videos are great! I've been doing parametric modeling for a while, but form modeling left me stumped until I found your videos. Now I'm only partially stumped 😂
You have a mash already set in the coordinate axes, but in 3D scanning the mash is often located chaotically in space. How did you align the mash to the coordinate axes? Is there a separate video on this topic? Thanks for the reply
This mesh was sent to me, but in the scan to part series and in this video near the end th-cam.com/video/Ft9qTVCMwC4/w-d-xo.html I talk about how to do it in ExScan Pro. There are other software options that let you do that for free as well. GOM inspect has a free plan that will let you align to a coordinate system. MeshLab as well but its not super user friendly.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thank you for your quick response! I use Geomagic Design X for these tasks, but was hoping that Fusion 360 could do an exact alignment of the scan in the coordinate axes
@@AlekseiKulikov-b5j Sadly no. If you go into direct edit on the mesh you can create planes using 3 points but for actually putting the mesh into the orientation based on the global coordinates, sadly no. If you use DesignX I would certainly handle that before you import it. Another tip, in Fusion you can right click on the mesh in the browser and make it Unselectable. Performance will be better and you can still snap to it with a form. It just prevents Fusion from flipping out when the cursor goes over the mesh.
That is typically done before the mesh gets to Fusion. It is much harder to do in fusion. So whatever software pre-processes the mesh. In fusion you have to "eyeball" it as I did with the Fiat fender series. Are you using a scanner and mesh software now?
There aren't any dedicated tools to make this happen in Fusion sadly. I do have a video showing some tips here th-cam.com/video/82vD7YSKIAo/w-d-xo.html but its best to do this in the scan/mesh software if possible. I will likely do a video in the near future showing GOM inspect, and im trying to see if Meshlab can make this happen easy enough, both have free versions/options. If you are scanning with an Einstar or anything from Shining, their Exscan software can do it, but if you are scanning with Revopoint, Creality or other hobby options they don't generally have an align tool on the mesh.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign yes I used a Revo and really struggled so I thought this might be a video topic. With your knowledge I‘m sure you got some good tips 👍🏻 I used mesh intesects then set points and made planes and lines and then used the align component command
Before updating , my design was showing up grey like in this lesson. Now it is clear. How can I change so that when I design it show grey and not clear again?
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I've deleted my previous comments because I left off an important detail. What I meant was that if you have two components, the objects in the component that is *not* active will look clear. I was thinking that might be what was tripping up Byron.
That is how it should behave Brian so all good. When working on Components the default behavior is to change the opacity of anything outside of that component to simplify the focus of the modeling.
To do it in the mesh software before CAD. Some scan software has alignment in it like the shinning 3d software. Others like the software for Revopoint scanners don't have an alignment feature in it but hopefully they will add it. In that case going to the free version of GOM Inspect, or using the free software MeshLab would be an option. If you direct edit a mesh in Fusion you can add planes based on selections on the mesh, but aligning it to the standard coordinate system is manual with Move/Copy so whenever possible do it in the mesh software before export.
I have this creative level 2 with some slightly different specs. mysolidbox.com/product-category/desktops/ I upgraded the graphics card (after this video was done). I was running a pretty low spec Gcard when this vid was done. Setting the mesh to unselectable helps. You can also copy the mesh and remesh with lower res so you have a hidden high res when you need it and a visible low res for helping view.
Unfortunately not. When someone shares a file with me I have to respect if they wanted it kept private or not. Paying for a scan can be expensive and that is the case with most of the scans that have been shared to this channel. They have not wanted them shared.
Amazing video! Extremely helpful tips on dealing with problems involving faces and approaching a design like this. The final extrude to the curved face using an offset is super useful. I have never seen this in any other video.
Glad you enjoyed it and it was helpful!!
hi, I've got a question. I'm making the fillet on the bottom of the spoiler like you did at 21:27 but I'm getting "inconsistent information in vertex and edge attributes". I'm doing this using my own scan data for my car, what should I go back and check to remedy this?
Hmm, so you were able to thicken the surface to a solid, but get hung up on the fillet on the corner. might want to try increasing the tolerance number when you stitch them. When you use stitch if any of that edge is red and not green it means there is a gap there which would cause a fillet not to work. If that isn't the case there might be a non-tangent section on your surface.
Those are the 2 places I would start with.
Thank you so much very informative and understandable video. I hunted for months this type of information for my own carbon parts. I really want to see a video from how you make printable moulds from a body. Sry for my poor english.
Making a 2 part mold in fusion is completely mind blowing to me. I have created and printed a spoiler riser myself but have no idea how to split the design and where the seperation lines would be. Would love to see you do a video on this
Thanks Dave, Let me give it some thought on how to best present it. The draft tool in Fusion does have the ability to build a parting line but something it is best to figure it out yourself for sure.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I appreciate your response. I will have a play with the draft tool. I wish I'd found your channel a long time ago. Excellent content!
I think sometimes instead of struggling in CAD to create a mold. It's probably best to make the mold manually from the design. The spoiler extension is such a weird shape I'm definitely gonna see if it's possible in fusion though. Cheers
Dave, I threw this together on the MX5 spoiler. Take a look a360.co/3Ex3nr5
The main idea is to build a block and i used Boundary Fill to remove the spoiler from the block. Then i built my "shut off" surfaces off the edge of the spoiler. Because it curves and wraps around you can see around the corner i made a sharp transition which I usually would avoid. But then I can use that surface as a split tool to split the boundary fill body. Note that I use my split surface along with a 0 offset of the faces of the spoiler as one big surface. Sometimes you can get away without that step but the more tricky the edges the better chance you need to get creative.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign wow. I've just looked at it and you've made it look so simple. Some tools I haven't used yet! You've used the surface tools to split it where you need it 🤯🤯🤯 impressive! Can't wait to try this. Thank you very much 👌
@@davecoggan9619 No problem. I will cover this in a video at some point. Other CAD software that has mold tools like Inventor and Solidworks to this automatically for you(when possible). They try to make these parting surfaces normal to the mold pull direction but that doesn't always work so knowing how to do it manually always helps.
The main tool I use is the Ruled Surface because you can have it create a surface toward a direction. So if you want to pull top/bottom you can make a surface ruled toward front/back or left/right. Then build in the corners manually.
There are other things to think about like alignment pins and weep holes for extra resin to escape but the sample should at least get you started. Ask any questions along the way!
hello, I just found out about your site and am already extremely grateful for various tutorials.
-> I have a question about T-Spline and API: Do you know if it is possible to manipulate T-Spline functions via API scripts?
I haven't found anything in the Fusion API documentation yet.
Thank you very much
You are welcome!
On the API side of things, I have never done anything with forms in API but with a quick search there are some things exposed to the api. If you search the help file for FormFeature or Tspline it will bring up the ability to create freeform bodies. I know from a program site that Fusion does access and create form features from other commands such as when creating a design from a Generative Outcome. It takes a quad mesh and turns it into a form body. I don't know if you can directly work with a freeform body though since it is a "direct" modeling approach I don't know how you would even figure out which vertex/edge/face to select with API.
Is there somethin specific you are trying to do?
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign
Thanks a lot for the quick reply.
Yes it is an API task which:
1. imports an STL mesh into Fusion 360 (almost spherical, some dents, etc).
2. imports a T-spline body (exact sphere with n faces, a bit larger than mesh, same origin, almost fit).
3. select all points on the T-spline
4. pull all vertecies onto the mesh to get a surface which can be manipulated (similar as you did with the MX5 Spoiler)
The task goes a bit further, but this is roughly the task I am trying to solve.
@@FabianSchollenberger So there is a step that might help you, but i don't instantly know if it exists. In a form under the Utilities there is a Convert option. that convert has a Quad Mesh to Tspline. If you are bringing your mesh into fusion as a quad mesh you might be able to directly convert it to a form without having to do the pull of a form sphere to that mesh. This is sort of how the mesh conversion tool to "organic" works. It does a remesh using quads and then converts those quads to a form. As long as the mesh is quads and as long as it doesn't exceed some upper limit of face count that would be the most straight forward route.
I tried using ChatGPT to sort this out but keep getting errors. a few snippets that might point you in the right direction.
rootComp.bRepBodies.add() it is telling me this will create a tspline body, but odd its calling it a bRepBodies.
calling the previous comp it called "tsBody" it does a startEdit, tSplineBodies.addByQuadMesh and a finishEdit.
I think its on the right track but I haven't had a ton of luck with ChatGPT yet for this sort of thing. I do have a video planned showing how to use this for API, but sadly sometimes its harder than just doing the program ;)
detailed video, keep going
Thanks! I am working on another spoiler for a different car with a subscriber right now. Hopefully will have something to show next week.
Be interesting to see how to use the pull tool on a less flat and more complex shapes like the lip of a front bumper? Or any solutions for that? Thanks! Very informative videos!
I can certainly do that. The greater the curvature the more divisions you will need. So it is important to get the shape how you want it first and probably subdivide with Exact as the option to maintain the shape. I have a sort of odd example I can show where I use Pull inward to a complex mesh shape. I'll give it some thought on which is more practical.
Would be good as I was trying to use the pull tool to get the surface from a front bumper scan I found but it kept going mental and every time it's really unusable! But if you could show how to get a similar effect like you did in the first half of the video using pull to make it match with the mesh surface but for complex curves like front bumpers to make attachable lips that would be cool!
I recorded a video yesterday which I think covers the critical bits. I need to edit and get it loaded in the next few days. stay tuned
Cheers bud that's magical! Look forward to it! 🙃
If you wanted to wrap down to the bottom edge of the trunk instead of following the back line of the trunk, how would you line up the edge with all of the curves. Is that just a matter of subdividing and lining up the vertices before doing the pull command?
Yeah you just need enough divisions to match whatever curvature you have. I did an AMG spoiler in this video th-cam.com/video/aUVgqCQrAqI/w-d-xo.html which wrapped around the back a bit more.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Your videos are great! I've been doing parametric modeling for a while, but form modeling left me stumped until I found your videos. Now I'm only partially stumped 😂
Hahaha. If it is any consolation very rarely do my form models just work. Takes some trial and error and "finesse". Just keep plugging away!
You have a mash already set in the coordinate axes, but in 3D scanning the mash is often located chaotically in space. How did you align the mash to the coordinate axes? Is there a separate video on this topic? Thanks for the reply
This mesh was sent to me, but in the scan to part series and in this video near the end th-cam.com/video/Ft9qTVCMwC4/w-d-xo.html I talk about how to do it in ExScan Pro. There are other software options that let you do that for free as well. GOM inspect has a free plan that will let you align to a coordinate system. MeshLab as well but its not super user friendly.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thank you for your quick response! I use Geomagic Design X for these tasks, but was hoping that Fusion 360 could do an exact alignment of the scan in the coordinate axes
@@AlekseiKulikov-b5j Sadly no. If you go into direct edit on the mesh you can create planes using 3 points but for actually putting the mesh into the orientation based on the global coordinates, sadly no. If you use DesignX I would certainly handle that before you import it.
Another tip, in Fusion you can right click on the mesh in the browser and make it Unselectable. Performance will be better and you can still snap to it with a form. It just prevents Fusion from flipping out when the cursor goes over the mesh.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks for the valuable advice!
How You have your 3d scan fitted exacly in the midlle of coordinates?
That is typically done before the mesh gets to Fusion. It is much harder to do in fusion. So whatever software pre-processes the mesh. In fusion you have to "eyeball" it as I did with the Fiat fender series.
Are you using a scanner and mesh software now?
Can you explain how to align the scan to the origin? In x y and z
There aren't any dedicated tools to make this happen in Fusion sadly. I do have a video showing some tips here th-cam.com/video/82vD7YSKIAo/w-d-xo.html but its best to do this in the scan/mesh software if possible. I will likely do a video in the near future showing GOM inspect, and im trying to see if Meshlab can make this happen easy enough, both have free versions/options. If you are scanning with an Einstar or anything from Shining, their Exscan software can do it, but if you are scanning with Revopoint, Creality or other hobby options they don't generally have an align tool on the mesh.
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign yes I used a Revo and really struggled so I thought this might be a video topic. With your knowledge I‘m sure you got some good tips 👍🏻
I used mesh intesects then set points and made planes and lines and then used the align component command
Before updating , my design was showing up grey like in this lesson. Now it is clear. How can I change so that when I design it show grey and not clear again?
Byron, can you help me understand. Were you using forms models, mesh, surfaces? Bodies or components. I don't think I follow what is going on.
@@brianfuller7241 Brian, can you email me a screen shot support@caducator.com
@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I've deleted my previous comments because I left off an important detail. What I meant was that if you have two components, the objects in the component that is *not* active will look clear. I was thinking that might be what was tripping up Byron.
That is how it should behave Brian so all good. When working on Components the default behavior is to change the opacity of anything outside of that component to simplify the focus of the modeling.
What is the best way to alinge a mesh accurately?
To do it in the mesh software before CAD. Some scan software has alignment in it like the shinning 3d software. Others like the software for Revopoint scanners don't have an alignment feature in it but hopefully they will add it. In that case going to the free version of GOM Inspect, or using the free software MeshLab would be an option.
If you direct edit a mesh in Fusion you can add planes based on selections on the mesh, but aligning it to the standard coordinate system is manual with Move/Copy so whenever possible do it in the mesh software before export.
what PC do you have. Mine is exploding with scan data. like this.
I have this creative level 2 with some slightly different specs. mysolidbox.com/product-category/desktops/ I upgraded the graphics card (after this video was done). I was running a pretty low spec Gcard when this vid was done.
Setting the mesh to unselectable helps. You can also copy the mesh and remesh with lower res so you have a hidden high res when you need it and a visible low res for helping view.
Are you still not able to share the scan of this trunk? Usually Miata community is super helpful so I wonder who's the owner of this data 🤔
Unfortunately not. When someone shares a file with me I have to respect if they wanted it kept private or not. Paying for a scan can be expensive and that is the case with most of the scans that have been shared to this channel. They have not wanted them shared.
thank you!
You're welcome!
Spoiler alert!
lol