Surface Mastery Part 16 - How To Create A Complex Handle With Fading Details

In this video we are going to dive back into surfacing and look at a few approaches to create a complex handle with cutaways and reliefs. We will start from scratch so there is no supplied dataset.

[@EricLaspe]

Woah. I thought I was good at Fusion until I watched this video and had to rewind several times to absorb all these new surface tool concepts you threw at me. 😄 I love it! Thank you for the awesome tutorial!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great to hear! Thanks for watching!

[@michaeltelemachus5112]

This video perfectly illustrate the very great limitations and weaknesses of current CAD programmes. When it comes to compound curves they leave a great deal to be desired. For anyone who is not using it everyday, the difficulties are all but unsurmountable.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Surfacing is a different approach for sure and the tool limitations are often the killer. I did this same exercise in Plasticity and plan to do it in Solidworks in the near future. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6O0lZ-FnKt5r80

[@michaeltelemachus5112]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I wish that you would teach me how to do these things in TurboCad

[@crashkg]

If you had The Matrix you could plug all this knowledge into your brain, but without it I am stuck with 1000 sticky notes on how to complete this process.

[@igora6367]

Please tell me which program is best suited for the design of cast plastic parts with very complex surfaces?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@igora6367 You can do that with pretty much any CAD program. Complex is a term that means different things to different people. I was the designer on this controller and I modeled it in Fusion. yawmanflight.com/ Every CAD program will have its limitations. Surface quality in Fusion can be tricky depending on how picky you need to be. The controller was a mix of Freeform for the base shape and a lot of surfacing for the details.

[@Kojotous007]

Thank you for continuing this series, it is my favorite along with form mastery series ❤

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@iotaprime2892]

This clears up so many pitfalls I've wrestled with. Yay!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad to hear it!

[@Schmorglebot]

Fun tutorial, thank you! A quick way to do the trim at 19:00 is to use the line to create a pipe that is set to cut. Consistent width cut along the line and the ends of the pipe can be extended/extruded if necessary

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Great tip! The pipe tool is solid and in the moment forgot you could use the outside face for the trim! Thanks for sharing and watching!

[@TAH1712]

Great lesson, professionally explained - you are definitely the best educator I've come across on KZbin. - These concepts are good for many CAD software's as the principles are very similar. Certainly I'm enjoying seeing how this is accomplished Fusion 360.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Wow, thanks! And yeah the same approach would be taken in other programs with slight tweaks. In solidworks the Fill tool for surfacing will work with an open boundary and it will fix it for you. Also there is a nice tool that is somewhat a combination of loft and sweep.

[@TAH1712]

Hmm, similar but not exactly the same - using a Parasolid modeller ( no, not that one) , a few quirks ( different to fusion 360) to get good edges but eventually BINGO! - a few hours to figure out the quirks and nuances though - I could have given up so easily... I have sketch constraints !

[@Richkingification]

Thank you so much for the informative videos. So glad to have found your channel. Will watch form mastery and injection molding series as well.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad it was helpful!

[@michaeltownsend1206]

I was watching the fusion 360 self paced documentation and you popped up in a few videos. I’ve never seen you but I recognized the voice from a dvd course I purchased on DriveWorks a long time ago. I remember thinking “this guy explains things great”. I was happy to run back across your content again, and at the perfect time. I am a long term SolidWorks user and looking into Fusion 360 for my personal projects. You are an awesome instructor and I will be looking into your course. Btw, I use DriveWorks to automate just about everything SolidWorks to this day. Thank you!!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Awesome to hear! You are very welcome! Driveworks is a cool product. So many think its just a dinky little express add-in but the full Driveworks offers up so much functionality! I still have the "little book of rules" in my desk even though I haven't touched it in years. Great that you found Fusion 360! You might find it lacking in some areas but it is a powerful piece of software. I do have a website right now with just some beginner content. www.LearnEverythingAboutDesign.com and if you find content in the learn portal on the autodesk website I authored most of that for Fusion and some for Inventor there. This channel was aimed at intermediate/advanced workflows but does cover the spectrum.

[@michaeltownsend1206]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesignDriveWorks Pro is what I use now and it is very capable. I am finding Fusion to be pretty liberating and refreshing, especially for modeling my personal projects outside of work. I do wish there was a weldments like environment though. I checked your site out, and plan on checking out your courses

[@MuitoDaora]

Loft is way better than Patch, is more consistent and you can control the direction of the tangency's transition. Surface is way better than Free Form if someone needs precision/measures within those curved faces.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Loft is great for 4 sided openings, but it produces inconsistencies at the profile and guide edges. If you look at the curvature analysis you will see a big jump in the surface curvature right at edges and guides, even internal guides. Theoretically it should be better than Patch, but right now Fusion surfaces are struggling. I hope they are fixed in the coming year. Trying to use a loft on a 3 sided opening like the first shape will cause a degenerate point where 2 profiles share a vertex. This is worse when you drive tangency. I agree with you that surfaces are b etter than free form if you need more precision with the curved faces, but just gotta check those edges. Problems become amplified when offsetting or thickening.

[@akaHarvesteR]

Another way to do the fillets that might have worked better would be to use a variable width fillet, keeping the blended side at 0. The fillet would then collapse to zero coming into the transition region. Variable width fillets can have their own issues, but maybe worth a try in this case.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

certainly one to keep in your bag of tricks for sure!

[@cheec8548]

Thank you for the guidance.. This is really not easy for me but you made it work finally..

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad to hear that!

[@igora6367]

Video interesting, thanks Please tell me which program is best suited for the design of cast plastic parts with very complex surfaces?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Hi Igor, I replied to your other comment on this.

[@Rollmops94]

Thanks dude. This really helps me.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad I could help!

[@StephenBoyd21]

Those are some ninja fusion skills.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

haha thanks

[@cr4723]

Really good. Thank you!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Glad you liked it!

[@jorbedo]

Excellent, thank you!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

You are welcome!

[@telemuva]

If doing this for injection molding, can you still maintain tangency at the mirror line, since most likely the mold will require some draft angle at the parting line? Thank you!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

That will partly depend on the mold requirements. Generally a part like this would have a reveal at the parting line and you may find the mold house will let you get away with a cylindrical part going down to tangent at the parting line. Usually with the caution about "drag marks". But to get around that you can split the difference on the reveal on both sides of the parting line getting to at least .5deg draft. Great question.

[@al3x_k388]

great video! more on surface modelling would be great!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks! Will do!

[@JesFinkJensen]

Could you perhaps show us how you'd make the same handle using forms instead of surfaces?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Good idea! the flow of edges would be tricky for sure. ill add it to my list.

[@JesFinkJensen]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign Thanks for considering this! I greatly appreciate your work!

[@gingovwales]

Is there a way to make this form solid after to 3d print? I've only really messed with solid parametric modelling on fusion so this is all new to me. Also for more organic shapes like this is it worth learning blender rather than Fusion's surface features? P.s great tutorial, nice and easy to follow :)

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

To make a surface a solid you have 2 methods. One is to use Create > Thicken to give it a wall thickness. The other is to cap the ends off making it "watertight" and stitch the pieces together. Fusion will make it a solid if it is in fact a closed volume. For complex shapes I have a lot of videos on Freeform modeling in Fusion. The workflow is very similar to a poly program like Blender where you push/pull. The only difference is that in Blender your end result is a Mesh. In fusion you end up with a surface or solid. So it kind of depends on what you want to do with the model down stream. I have some intro to blender videos in a series as well as this same model done in Plasticity, which is a new direct modeling program working with NURBS like Fusion, but in a more blender type workflow. For me i stick with CAD because usually my end goal is to make something. There are some pros/cons to each of course. If the end goal was a video game asset or just rendering/animation I might start with blender. I am quicker in CAD so just converting to a mesh after I model either from Fusion or Plasticity is faster than modeling in Blender for most things for me.

[@gingovwales]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I'm a design engineer by trade and primarily use Inventor at work and use Fusion for my hobbyist/3D printing tasks. Free form modelling has never been something ive dove into, sheet metal/machining/parametric design is my usual work. But wanted to dive into more organic shaping for my own curiosities and benefits, my real end goal would be to re-create movie props to 3D print for myself. Ill look through your videos as I like how i was able to follow your process and you explain yourself clearly :) Keep up the good work, I look forward to seeing more of your videos, thanks again

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@gingovwales Thanks! and once you spend a little time with forms you will enjoy it. The same Tsplines is built into Inventor although there are some minor differences. But if you are recreating props then using forms will likely be a big help.

[@rpatrick2]

Thank you, didn't you do a patch with a floating rail that dissolved into a surface like this also?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

hmmm. Probably in the intake scoop video in this series. we had to blend and edge.

[@3runjosh]

This was quite fun doing this in Fusion until the filleting part. I want to use Moi3D or Plasticity for surfacing from now on. Would you recommend one over the other?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I don't have personal experience with Moi, but I do hear a lot of users switching from it and Shapr3d over to Plasticity. I think the future versions of Plasticity will get better surface support(some of the beta features are better already). I am not sure I would totally switch over to Plasticity just yet if your main goal is surfacing. There is a channel www.youtube.com/@Kuechmeister that does a lot of complex surfacing with Plasticity. No audio or narration but might give you some ideas on workflow. He does some amazing stuff with it!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

I did the same video today but in plasticity so you can see the differences. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6O0lZ-FnKt5r80

[@3runjosh]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign great work! and thanks

[@GeryS.]

This "handle" thing can be created way easier with "create form" and work your way from a zylinder/plane/box to get the shape you want. Doing this with surfaces, just look above and the drawbacks this technique has, it's way more complicated than "create form". I know it's not parametric but more versatile in general imho.!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@GeryS. I would have to disagree with this shape. i cover forms quite a bit on this channel but i think in this case the surface is much easier(even with its challenges). Getting the handle relief shapes would be tricky because it requires the form edges to change direction which means creating star points. Possible yes, but I don't know that it would be easier. IF the handle curves didn't go from "vertical" to "horizontal" crossing over the edges on the form 100% it would be easier.

[@keal.vietnam]

Perfect !

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Thanks!

[@martinhub3737]

Very good video. I did and Im getting two different color. I dont know how to change it. Shift + N toggle the color but only inside. I dont know why.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

In the Browser bodies is there a single surface body or more than 1? Shift+N is component color cycling which temporarily overrides any appearances or materials you have applied. You can find that in Inspect. BUT that would change the inside and outside colors of the surface. Surfaces have a "Normal" direction. generally this is outward. Depending on your visualization settings you may see a lighter variation of the inside surface vs the outside surface. but that should go away if you apply an appearance to the design or the body in the bodies folder.

[@martinhub3737]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign at 5.30 of your video I see only one color which grey steel color. In my case this grey color is inside and greenish is outside. I should be in reverse. Im lost now

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@martinhub3737 hmm, it shouldn't really matter honestly but you can try the surface tool Reverse Normal on the modify tools. try that and see what happens. In general surfaces will have a normal direction. This really only matters for when you thicken. the normal direction will be positive, and inside will be negative. It is possible a default setting got switched for you during an update as well. Go into your User Preferences (top right corner where you image/name is). go to Graphics and Disable surface normal display.

[@martinhub3737]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign "Reverse to normal" did the magic :) it fixed. Thanks a lot!!! Now I will investigate what this command really is for.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@martinhub3737 Awesome! The normal of a surface is just a way for the software to know which was is "in" and which way is "out". If you turn the setting off in the user preferences you would never know until you thicken a surface and just have to figure out which way is pos/neg.

[@jamesbarratt593]

New to 3d printing. Got a part in fusion I want to print on creality cr10s pro v2 printer. Do you have a video showing me the process?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

In this video I believe I talk about using fusion as the slicer and the creality slicer. kzbin.info/www/bejne/eYDLameFqJloipo I might have also talked about the slicer process in the Gopro handle video. Are you using the Creality slicer now? I am working on a design for 3d printing course now but it will likely be a few weeks before its out.

[@jamesbarratt593]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign in truth I did loads of 3d with fusion 3 years ago. My creality cr10s pro v2 I cant see the files on the data card when I insert it in the printer. The old files I used to print are on the card and they when looked at on my mac end in gcode. I have bambu x1 carbo and that I can export file from fusion to bambu studio then slice and convert to gcode. Put card in x1 carbon printer and print. But if I put the card in the creality cr10s pro v2 nothing appears.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@jamesbarratt593 hmm that is interesting. My ender 7 seems to be limited to 5 pages on the display. Generally when i export Gcode from fusion i save it with FSN_ and the file name displays just fine. The default for me from the creality slicer are CE7_. Do you have another sd card you can try with only 1 file on it? I do go in and delete gcode files off my sd card once i reach 5 pages so maybe I just haven't hit that limit. Also bambu x1... jealous!

[@jamesbarratt593]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign ok so got the x1 carbon working sweet. No thanks to bambu as they never contacted me. What I did was restore it to factory settings. So dont upgrade the firmware as it junks the machine. As for the cr10s pro v2. I changed filament and then that stopped working. Big bulge of filament on the nozzle but not pushing down on the table. Saw the filament motor moving and not slipping so went for new nozzles. No affect. If its not coming out has to be nozzle. Line back to motor or motor weak. Nozzle defo gets red hot.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@jamesbarratt593 since that cr10 is a direct drive and the spool is right on top that is strange. Does the processor have an option to feed without heating the nozzle? like if you took the nozzle out and just check the feed on the extruder? I know the firmware on the ender i have throws a warning with trying to feed with the nozzle not up to temp but you can cheat it. Are the other nozzles you tried from Creality? Glad at least the bamboo is working!

[@CupidChud]

Is there a way to put a sketch over this shape and extrude it out evenly? I can only manage make this work on single curve pieces.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

A sketch in Fusion can only be extruded if its planar, so any curve on this wouldn't work. What is the end goal with the extrude? that might help direct you a bit better.

[@CupidChud]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign I want to have a handle and then I would like to add a sketch of a design to be extruded around it. For example, imagine the handle in this video, with a spiderweb design sticking out by a millimeter.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@CupidChud There is an emboss tool. In the past that would only work on cylindrical bodies, but they updated it and you could try it on this and see if it would work. Basically you would draw your web in 2d in front of the handle and try to wrap it. Your best bet is likely trying to Split Face from a few angles, but as you wrap around it that would get a bit tricky. If emboss doesn't work it would be super tedious on a surface model but not impossible.

[@3runjosh]

If you took the .step file with the curved surface cutout and put it in plasticity to fill in then bring it back to fusion would you mess up the parametric history?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

yeah you would. Fusion has "AnyCad" which lets you maintain an external link to say a solidworks or inventor file, but that is a component in an assembly and not something in the middle of the timeline.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@3runjosh That depends on what you mean by manufacturing. If I was designing for say injection molding, no way I would use Plasticity. I need to control things like wall thickness of ribs universally with parameters so i can tweak and change them. If you were designing for 3d print and making all the parts together in the 1 file, you could do it all in plasticity.

[@brandenmuirhead8988]

Found this video trying to draw something myself. Seems a pencil and paper are my solution. I'm not sure I will ever get this right. I need some help to draw something. Want to help?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

You can do it! Just have to keep practicing! Surface modeling is tricky and does take time but there are some basic videos in the playlist for core skills needed.

[@ruitavares3792]

👍👍👍

[@Seed-of-the-Universe]

mega!

[@bhaveshchaudhari3406]

is it printable ?

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

Most slicers will want a solid body. To make the handle printable as a solid with say 10% infill you just need to cap the ends off and stitch it together. Once you stitch a closed "water tight" volume of surfaces together, Fusion makes it a solid body. You could also thicken it and have a thinwall part, but capping it and making it solid is likely best.

[@francisbazil4380]

Every time I try to use the ruled edge it comes out of multiple directions instead of the one line

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

hmm, in this example or just in general? Are the edges you are using connected to a single surface body? Stitched together? Try something simple. sketch a line/spline/arc or whatever you want, but make sure it has at least 2 sketch segments and that they are tangent/smooth with each other. Extrude it as a surface. then do a ruled surface on its edge.

[@francisbazil4380]

I ended up having to hide the body and rule the sketch then unhide the body that was the only way I got it to work, but thank you for your speedy response and help!@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign

[@franckkheddache6731]

It's faster and easier to create this model with Plasticity. It's a new nurb soft. Try it !!!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

kzbin.info/aero/PLBDfGh8A8kXXZx0FUCg05qIbts5zbeRT9 :)

[@franckkheddache6731]

@@LearnEverythingAboutDesign It is true that I have subscribed to your channel for some time. Sorry for my english, i'm french !!!

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

@@franckkheddache6731 no problem:) not sure this would be any better in plasticity but when i have time ill play with it

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6O0lZ-FnKt5r80 I made the same thing in plasticity and you can see the difference between the two

[@joratto2833]

mistake 23:24

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

yeah LOL i missed that one in edit. oops

[@ctbram0627]

surfacing in fusion is like having my tonsils out through my anus. That is to say it is really convoluted and non-intuitive. There are much better packages for surfacing.

[@LearnEverythingAboutDesign]

What do you prefer to use? I use a lot of different programs and the approach in most is very similar. Some like Solidworks let you build 3d curves from just 2 sketches, while Fusion and Inventor require a 3rd sketch to house the projections for example. Xnurbs in Plasticity (or if you use it as a plugin in other programs) offers a lot of flexibility in design.