hub,
What Al is suggesting sounds like a pretty good method to me. You might get a high-polygon count with this method though, rather than a low one. If this is the case, I would suggest using the andquot;Object Cleanerandquot; plug-in, and/or the andquot;Reduce Facesandquot; operation to see what you end up with.
I haven’t tried anything like a coil yet, and would be interested in seeing what you come up with.
Les
Hi everybody…
Could you teach me how to modelize quickly a low- polygon spring with 3dgc ?
Thanks!
I’m assuming you mean a coil spring? I can think of a couple of methods. Perhaps the easiest would be with the extrusion tool.
Draw a circle in the extrusion cross-section, this would be the cross-section of the actual andquot;wireandquot; that makes up the spring. Draw another circle in one of the extrusion path windows. This would be the circumference of the coil. What you should have now is a torus. In the other extrusion path window, move the end points, one up, the other down. Depending on how many nodes you used to make the coil circle, you may have to space out a bunch of them vertically. You should end up with a sort of crooked andquot;Zandquot; shaped path.
This should be one 360 degree coil. Now just clone this object as needed (moving in the longitudinal axis of the spring) to build the entire length of the spring.
Hmmm. Clear as mud?
No doubt in the time it took me to write this post, some of the more talented people here have probably already written a script to do this for you.
Hub,
I did this coil in about 30-45 minutes. It’s very rough and crude, but I think you can see whether or not it has potential…
I created it with a torus, and here’s what I did.
1). Double-click the torus and set the inner radius to 60. Leave Lattitude and Longitude at defaults(set these according to what you need).
2). Performed a Boolean Subtraction, using a flattened cube, to create a separation.
3). Selected all but one group of faces, and shifted them upward. Then de-selected one group of faces and shifted upward again. Repeat this until each group of faces has been shifted.
4). Selected the end face of the torus(top one) and shift it upward to match the rest.
5). Cloned the torus one time, postioned, and merged it to the lower torus.
Some modellers don’t like using the merge operation. I used it just to save time.
At any rate you can see whether or not this method will work for you.
Les <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="
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