Hello All,
I am a recent graduate and a young Junior designer. One problem that has plagued me for a while is what best practices to use when surfacing for injection moulded parts. I'm familiar with the old design-draft-fillet order of business, but I am still running into some troubles.
I've heard many people say "thicken your surfaces first, then add fillets" to avoid thickening (or shelling) errors of "minimum radius of curvature" creating self-intersections on the inside of the part. My question is this: what if I'm not using fillets to create these tight radii? I often use lofts or boundary surfaces as they provide more control over the surface when creating parts. These inevitably create tight radii in some areas that fail when thickening.
Am I doing things in the wrong order? Or perhaps using the wrong tools? I just spent several hours using offset surfaces, extending edges, trimming, and face filleting to thicken my parts. Very painstaking and inefficient, any feedback would be great, and I suppose I could provide a model if necessary.
JDM
J,
I agree with Lenny on this one. Although I often do, he is good at what he does.
The best practice is... (drumroll).... Trial and Error. Don't get stuck always trying to make the same tool work over and over again for every part / project. Sometimes you spend all of your time creating surfaces and trimming them together. Other times you can create a few blobs and shell them out. I can go on and on. Surfacing is often regarded as a Dark Art, those who can do it, prefer to keep it that way. What can I say, surfacing experts like to be mysterious.
Just keep plugging away at it, use all the tools, use tools in ways they werent meant, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Seat time and experience will help you better predict the results of the tools you use. That is where you find your best practices.
Chris