- Surface Design is quite Overwhelming in Onshape or other CAD application. Due to the parametric entities you need to set, it will takes time and you might not achieve the surface you want.
Here are a few tools and techniques I recommend you to use, if you want to create Surface Concept like Black Panther. I will share it with these categories
Curve tools
In Onshape, and many Professional CAD softwares such as Solidworks, Autodesk Invetor, Fusion360 or even FreeCAD; curve is the most powerful tools to draw your surface boundaries.
With the capabilities of creating 3D curves in Onshape, and manipulating it, you can create an awesome and complex shape. So here are the list of curve tools you can use in Onshape
Projected Curve is one tools to combine 2 sketches or projected sketch into a surface (or faces)
Composite curve is used to turn an existed edges into one curve
The 2 tools have quite the same use by creating 3d curve using points and vertices
Edit curve is very useful to adjust your curvature to your needed. So instead of keeping the curve you build from the previous tools, you can adjust it with Edit curve.
This tool is used in case you need a partial curve.
- 2D Sketch
Lastly, without ignoring the most used tools, you can even rely on 2D sketch to create surface boundaries.
Within those curve tools you can create an awesome surface boundaries.
Surface tools
Once you have all of your boundaries you can create your Surface. In Onshape, you can create surface from Open Boundaries and Close Loop boundaries.
Let’s take a look one by one into those tools.
Open Boundaries
For Open Boundaries, all basic four (4) 3D tools can be used on it. With Open Boundaries, your surface result is very smooth but not very precise in terms of curvature matching.
Remember that in this tools there is “Surface” tab.
- Extrude
In case you have a simple 2 sketch, and your end result is a linear surface, Extrude tools is the best fit for that. So do not seek any further, The simpler the better
- Revolve
In case of half circle surface or something that has central axis revolution, just use revolve.
- Sweep
If you have one sketch to goes around a path, use sweep to make everything simpler
- Loft
This is the most powerful tools that mostly used in Surfacing. You will use the tools to join 2 different curves or sketches. Loft can be used for both open boundaries and close boundaries.
Ruled Surface is quite similar to sweep but in more advanced one
Close boundaries
For close boundaries, you can create a more precise, smooth surface curvature because you can control all parameters within it.
- Loft
As I said, Loft can be used in closed boundaries too by using the closing boundaries as guide and continuity. Besides you can use an extra parameters as path.
- Fill
You cannot use fill with open boundaries. Fill only work on a loop curves. Like Loft, you can control your fill curvature with a guide that intersects boundaries.
Boundary Surface is quite similar to loft. Unlike Loft, you have to assign all cuves and match it within U and V orientations
Surface Modifier tools
Once you created your surface, you often need to tweak the existing surface in order for to accomplish the design goal. So here are some few tools you mostly use to modify your surface:
- Split
This is one of the most useful surface modifier tools, in order for you to split some surface, and delete face afterwards for some surface curvature change.
- Delete Face
After splitting, we always delete face to delete some face part for curvature change
- Offset Surface
This tools also is most common in case you need to bridge 2 offseted surface for some carve or emboss pattern with the same curvature flow for example
- Move Boundary
You need to move boundaries (Trim or Extend) In case you want to intersect it with other Surfaces in order for you to use tools like Mutual trim or simple trim
- Mutual Trim
If you have 2 surfaces that you want to trim and merge at the same time, this is the perfect tools
Within those tools, you can create an awesome Surface concept such as a Helmet or Heros Masks like Black Panther Mask
I Design this Black Panther Mask using almost all tools I mentionned above. I generated the BluePrint of this one using Gemini.
You can download the BluePrint Here.
You can even expand your creativity by creating a Car surface bodies.
I guess this Post help you to choose the best tools for your design.
Let me know your thought about it.
See you soon