[Plugin Beta] Curviloft 1.2d - 13 Apr 12 (Loft & Skinning)

[Daniel S]

Thank you Fredo!!!

The loft tool works very well. All seems very user friendly... and that is very difficult in tools like this ones. The use of your hoverselect tool in the manual selection makes it very simple too.

In the release note you say that there are some limitations and unfinished work.
Modify vertex matching by selecting a vertex and dragging it to a new position inside the floating palette is a limitation or a unfinished feature?. That would be awesome.

And is possible to allow SketchUp remember the last position of the floating palette? In the default position I have to move it always because there I have all the SU tools there.

Captura.JPG

Daniel S

PS. Can´t wait for the other tools Hope that you can realease more beta versions before the "official release".

[Fredo6]

A seat i recently designed needed an end that curved round and formed the back rest. I've just played for 20mins on the beta and i'm struggling. can curviloft help?

cheers
chris

I think you need to draw first the rails that give the shape of the junction, making sure that each surface would be closed by 4 or 3 curves. Then you can apply the Skinning function.

Fredo

[Fredo6]

In the release note you say that there are some limitations and unfinished work.
Modify vertex matching by selecting a vertex and dragging it to a new position inside the floating palette is a limitation or a unfinished feature?. That would be awesome.

This is rather an unfinished feature. Actually, this is why you have a preview zone in the floating palette, because editing on the model, with faces hiding vertices may be less convenient.

And is possible to allow SketchUp remember the last position of the floating palette? In the default position I have to move it always because there I have all the SU tools there.
Daniel S

Also an unfinished feature

PS. Can´t wait for the other tools Hope that you can realease more beta versions before the "official release".

The other tools work but may have more issues and unfinished features.

Fredo

[vidy]

Hai Fredo, thanks for this pre release ver, im really excited with this capability, thanks againn

regards,

[cmeed]

I think you need to draw first the rails that give the shape of the junction, making sure that each surface would be closed by 4 or 3 curves. Then you can apply the Skinning function.

Fredo[/quote]

Thanks but i couldn't get the rails working with this. I don't understand it completely yet. i need to wait till the documentation comes out as i seem to find myself with alot of colourful lines with 7,8,9 written on them.

But on the up side i worked the path method see pics YES!

[charly2008]

This is a new milestone. I find this tool opens up new design possibilities. The loft tool works very well and easy to understand. Especially because the geometry of the forms can be calculated in advance. Thanks for this wonderful tool.

The last image below is an almost perfect Moebius band. Unfortunately, the last segment is not closed.

[TIG]

Fredo

This is already too impressive

[Fredo6]

Here is the Moebius ribbon with closure

Curviloft Moebius.png

Fredo

[hgdn]

Fredo,
Great impact for SU users in creating 3d models. With yours I am not afraid of creating 3d models from now on..still new!!! Easy and powerful plugins eventhough you give bug warnings but I have not seen any thing so far!!
Genius and generous Fredo

[lapx]

I've tried it as well. Thanks Fredo for such a wonderful tool. Can you get it to maintain a sharp edge? I noticed it round the corners. Would be nice to have this as an option if available.

[Ruturaj]

Thank you Fredo Sir,

you are great
Many Many Many THANK you.

I'm shocked man

This plugin is very helpful thank you.

[TIG]

I've tried it as well. Thanks Fredo for such a wonderful. Can you get it to maintain a sharp edge? I noticed it round the corners. Would be nice to have this as an option if available.

These tools do work very well....
The form is auto-smoothed ? You can always select the resultant group and right-click > soften, and set sliders to 0 and all edges will un-smooth/un-soften etc...
or view > hidden_geometry toggle to 'on' and use erase+ctrl+shift to un-soften wiped edges [also remember that erase+ctrl softens wiped edges and erase+shift hides wiped edges - but you must select hidden lines to unhide them using entity info, as there is not erase >> unhide equivalent key-combo...]

[massimo]

Already a must-have plugin. Thank you Fredo.

[charly2008]

Some ideas with Grow and Curviloft

[charly2008]

In some forms it comes to interesting but not unanticipated results.

[Fredo6]

In some forms it comes to interesting but not unanticipated results.

Charly,

There are still missing features in Loft along Path, in particular about spiral specific treatments.
But if you can post your model, I can have a look and see if this can be handled.

Thanks

Fredo

[charly2008]

Hi Fredo,

attached you wil have a similar model because the first one i have deleted. I selected each segment separately. Thanks again for your plugin, thanks for your efforts.

Karl (Charly)

[charly2008]

The same shape with small modifications

[lapx]

Thanks Tig! I'll try it out

[Didier Bur]

Hi Fredo,

I get a bugsplat EVERYTIME I try to "loft by spline", no matter the method used. Any possible conflict with other plugins ?

F: J'ai un bugsplat directement après avoir cliqué l'icône, quelle que soit la méthode de sélection que j'utilise pour les faces, contours, chemins, etc. Est-ce qu'il y a à ta connaissance un conflit possible avec un autre plugin (ceux de TIG par exemple, qui font un job similaire ?).
Je suis scotché, là...

[Fredo6]

Hi Fredo,

I get a bugsplat EVERYTIME I try to "loft by spline", no matter the method used. Any possible conflict with other plugins ?

At what step do you get the bug splat: selection, preview, generation of geometry?
Is it with any model?

I don't think there are conflicts with other plugins, and anyway not TIG's ones, because I have them in active my environment.

Fredo

[Didier Bur]

@Fredo6: at any time, either in a blank new model, or in a model with geometry in it.
The bugsplat occurs as soon as I click on the icon, once I have selected contours or faces and the path (no problem with selection.

I'm considering to start with an empty Plugins folder (except curviloft of course ) to see what happens.

[urgen]

...Oh, Fredo,thank you very much!

[djorkaeff]

Very good and promising plugin. Thank you for your effort and generosity!

[JClements]

Hi Fredo:

Is there anyway, once the surface group is created, that it could store the Curviloft parameters used? That way the user, if they had not completed all the surfacing, could verify and reuse those settings at a later time.

Perhaps there could be an eyedropper that could "suck up" the values of an existing surface-group and paste them into the Curviloft dialog?

=========

I have been doing a bit of testing using contours from CAD and comparing the results with the Sandbox tool. I was not able to reduce the total curviloft surfaces (triangles and quadrangles) between contour elevations compared to the triangulated surfaces sandbox creates BUT Curviloft places its surfaces where they SHOULD BE unlike Sandbox which places surfaces that "bridge" across vertices of the same elevation ...that is a big time saver.

[pep75]

This is a brilliant Plug-In...Super. Fredo fantastic!!! This is just what SU needed, just that little extra spline modelling tool. And for free! Better then the Booltools where you'll have to pay for and works 25% of the time...

Fredo you're my hero!

[TIG]

This is a brilliant Plug-In... And for free! ...

Please remember that although many of the scripters, like Fredo, do publish their tools freely, there is often a PayPal 'Donation' available - so you can give Fredo a little something, if you think he's worth it [which he is!] - I'm sure he won't object...

[autarchos]

Hi Fredo -

I am having the same problem as Didier with bugsplats. I am able to make geometry selections, but the moment I attempt a loft by spline, SU crashes.

This occurs only on PC for me - the plugin works fine on Mac (both platforms have the latest version of SU)

[baz]

had a good play with loft by spline today...
...no probs.
its looking abfab. thanks fredo.

ba
win7, (for my sins ). pent4. 3ghz. 3gb ram. nvidea 6600

[Didier Bur]

Hi Fredo6,

I finally got it to start without a bugsplat. Select edges, spline, and here is the error message:

Error: #<NoMethodError: undefined method `-' for nil:NilClass>
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:953:in `spline_matrix_match_point'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:930:in `spline_matrix_column'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:927:in `each'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:927:in `spline_matrix_column'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:646:in `spline_matrix_analyze'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:645:in `each'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:645:in `spline_matrix_analyze'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftSpline.rb:234:in `spline_junction_construct'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:1371:in `junction_construct'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:415:in `link_construct_all'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:415:in `each'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:415:in `link_construct_all'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:404:in `link_calculate_all'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:377:in `prepare_all'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftAlgo.rb:368:in `proceed'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftTool.rb:590:in `transition_to_loft'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/CURVILOFT_Dir_10/CurviloftTool.rb:575:in `notify_edge_picked'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/LIBFREDO6_Dir_35/Lib6EdgePicker.rb:356:in `call'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/LIBFREDO6_Dir_35/Lib6EdgePicker.rb:356:in `notify_action'
C:/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 7/Plugins/LIBFREDO6_Dir_35/Lib6EdgePicker.rb:1214:in `click_outside'

Hope this helps you to debug somewhat