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The Power of Surface Tools in Onshape – Black Panther Mask

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
Surface tools
Surface modifier tools

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

Projected Curve is one tools to combine 2 sketches or projected sketch into a surface (or faces)

Composite curve

Composite curve is used to turn an existed edges into one curve

Bridging Curve or 3D fit Spline

The 2 tools have quite the same use by creating 3d curve using points and vertices

Edit Curve

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.

Trim 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

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

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

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SPHER PATTERN – GOLF BALL IN ONSHAPE

MikaiaVal

Creating pattern around sphere, such as Golf Ball is quite challenging in CAD like Onshape, Fusion360 or Solidworks. Wrapping profile into 360 deg sphere is quite impossible. The profile will be distorted or it will be placed in wrong map.

If we refer to a sphere from meshed 3D application like Blender, By using triangle or quad polygon, We can see the best pattern distribution. And translating that into CAD needs an advanced maths, by creating a point center by mapping it into the sphere surface. Quite complex, but here are a few distribution list you can apply on a sphere

In Onshape, Default wrap feature is still limited on Cylinder and Cone. Wrapping profile on a sphere is still impossible, unless we created a Custom Feature Script.

So here are 2 Custom Feature Script that you can try if you want to wrap some basic profile (circle, hexagon, square, diamond) on a sphere that I called it Sphere Pattern, or if you want to create a golf ball design.

These scripts are not stable. You can custom and improved it. You can share your improved version with me as well.

Stay tuned, I will share to you an Advanced Wrap custom script soon.

https://youtu.be/6Gj9WQtNdkc

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X-Plane 12, the best Flight simulation ever.

MikaiaVal

Flight Simulator is one of the famouse simulation games. I am a big fan of simulation games, such as driving simulations with Euro Truck or American Truck and flight simulations. I played the flight simulator for the first time in 2010, just for a few months. I stopped playing it because the game was quite heavy on the laptop I had at that time. It was hard to play the game using a keyboard and mouse. In a flight simulator, the landing is one of the most challenging phases.

16 years passed, and I just bought a used Logitech X3D Pro joystick. Therefore, as a flight simulation enthusiast, I got back into the game.

There are many flight simulation games available in the market. The one I am really interested in is X-Plane by Laminar. Here are the main reasons why I chose X-Plane:

Offline playing

I can play X-Plane offline as long as I download all the tools I need for the game, such as scenery and aircraft. You can add additional add-ons if necessary (aircraft tools, airport tools and services, etc.)

Free Demos

X-Plane offers free flight demos for all users to test the game before purchasing it. The free demo version allows users 15 minutes of use before the game becomes locked. Then, the flight will start again, and the 15 minutes will restart at the same time.

Affordable simulator game

Regarding the game itself, it’s quality; mainly, the game is very affordable. You can unlock almost everything for about $60. Then enjoy the game fully.

You can choose whether you want to play it on Steam, or you want a digital download. You can even buy a DVD copy of the game. I recommend this one if you live in the US or in Europe.

The purchase is straightforward. Once you make it, you will receive an email confirmation with an installation guide.

Once you install the full version of it, you unlock another scenery globally with more than 30k airports, additional aircraft, and some extra tools such as PMDG, “Flight Factor”,etc. Plus, your flight is not limited to the 15min anymore. You can fly for as long as you want with real-time weather.

In addition, you are part of the Laminar Research Family.

One challenge I faced when I installed X-Plane in it’s demos version is that my internet is very slow. My average download speed is about 300kb/s. Also, I cannot keep my Laptop on all days. I switch it every 12 hours due to my solar panel system as my power plan. So I need 2 days or so to download all 25Gb of x-plane data as a demo. The additional data, after you purchase it, is about 60Gb, including all scenery globally. Fortunately, you can download it one by one.

So how could I overcome that challenge?

When you run the X-Plane installation, a Windows pop-up appears to guide you through the installation steps.

As you see in the picture above, normally, you should wait until the download finished. The only available buttons are: cancel installation, buy X-Plane, and back. And the new X-Plane 12 installer does not even have a close button.

So here are the steps you should follow if you need to download the demo version in 2 days or more:

Run the X-Plane installer and follow the prompt. In your first installation, when you decide to stop and switch off your laptop and your internet, go to Task Manager and look at X-Plane 12 Installer Apps, then End task.

One thing you should do before you end the task, in case you are afraid of it, is copy everything that has been downloaded as a backup in a new folder. The default X-Plane folder is located in C:\X-Plane 12. So copy everything inside that folder as backup just in case.

To continue your installation and download, run the installer again and click on “update demo”. If you see that button Update Demo, it means that everything you downloaded the day before are not lost.

After that, pick the destination where you put the previous data that you downloaded.

Next, after checking the server, scanning existing files, and your disk space, the installer shows what is left to be downloaded.

Then you can run the installation until the end.

One thing I want to highlight is that: If you cannot download all data continuously, Never hit the “Cancel installation”. Once you hit it, all data will be erased and you will download everything from the beginning. I recommend you follow the steps above.

All in all, X-Plane is one of the great games for those who like flight simulation. However, if you are a fan of Flight Simulator, you can play it because it has very good and realistic scenery too. The reason I do not choose Flight Simulator is my internet connection limit. And if you want to test and try flight simulation for Free, you can try FlightGear. I even started with FlightGear before switching into X-Plane.

As part of Laminar Research Family, I can use my skills as CAD designer for the research by designing some basic scenery and advanced aircraft tools.

One of my next challenges is driving simulation once I have all the gear for it.

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