Wires for Swage

#1

Hi all, and especially all EIM gurus,

currently I have alot of fun with the modeling of a zeppelin skeleton. Swage does a rally good job here. But I have a problem.

To do this as efficient as possible I need efficient wires for the swag extrusion. I model the wires in EIM and everything works great except one thing: The wires exported from EIM have much too many vertices. The result is really polyheavy swage profiles which I need to avoid.

Example: A cross section ring of the zeppelin is a regular 36 sided polygon. It is all made of straight lines. I would think that a wire of this would have 36 vertices and 36 segments (lines). But the exported wire from EIM has around 1800 vertices. Not good, since the swage object will also have 1800 segments instead of 36.

So, what is the trick here?

I have tried “WireUtility.plm” in Animator, it reduces the vertices, but unfortunately does not keep the “important” vertices (the corners of the polygon) but sample somwhere inbetween - so I loose my shape.

I have covered the wires in EIM and used Wiremaker.plm with them. This works for closed shapes very well, but not for open wires…

I have searched all Tesselation settings in EIM that I could find. But I do not find an option to save straight lines with fewer vertices.

Please help

Jens

#2

You may want to try the cgchat list Bear provides. I remember some discussion regarding dense curves coming in from EIM and think I remember hearing a solution.

I don’t know of one but have seen the problem you mention.

#3

You mean the Platter?

Jens

#4

I imagine someone might know at the platter, but no, this list here:

Copy/pasted -

This message comes from the EI How-To
list - please keep all messages on-topic.
For more general discussions, please
subscribe to the CG List.

To change your subscription settings, please
go to: http://www.postphase.com/lists.html

#5

Jens,

I looked for an answer at PostForum and could only find a reference by David Argemi to the use of WireUtil for this purpose. Please post your solution if you find one. Good luck!

Jim Mulcahy

#6

Mmmhhh, ok this might not help you but is worth mentioning, i think. I created an “regular N-sided Polygon” with 36 segments, uncovered it and exported it as .sat for ViaCAD. In ViaCAD it show´s exactly the same amount of segments.

Regards
Stefan

#7

Hm… Viacad. I guess I need to check it out. Thanks alot!

Jens

#8

What about the LODe Stone plugin at NorthernLights?
It claims to reduce the number of polygons in any model.

Jim Mulcahy

#9

Lodestone might be an interesting solution, allowing you to dynamically adjust the resolution of the wires on a as needed basis, however additional plugins in the Swage hierarchy will eventually complicate things or even slow things down if it gets too involved. You’d probably see the hit everytime you modify something and all the Lodestone calls would have to come into play.

I’m also assuming that Jens wants to use EIM over Trestle because EIM has 2D booleens and other 2D drawing functions Trestle lacks. However for basic shapes Trestle is ideal. It allows for Master/Slave drawing and animation capabilities so one rib of the Zeppelin could be drawn and all slave “ribs” could be reshaped instantly.

To solve Jens’ problem, the imported source child profile/polyline must be addressed. I’ll take a look into EIM again too to see if I can find a wire tesselation setting otherwise, another solution would be use FormZ. Polyline DXF files work as Swage children, and I believe formZ has a pretty decent level of control over tesselation.

#10

I do not understand Viacad… sorry. All my wires come into it split up into single segments, and not polylines… what settings must I use? Can I join single segments into one wire?

I do not have FormZ so that is out of question for me now.

Yes, I use EIM because this needs to be really precise and it gives me the necessary tools to do it. And I do not want to animate the shape of the zeppelin…

Lod Stone… I don’t know if it also reduces vertices in wires. I would save out wires as facts anyway so I guess it would not burden the rest of the modeling process…

Bear said to me that wire tesselation is broken in EIM :frowning:

Jeez… why is everything always so complicated. I am really frustrated since this really started well… and now I am fiddeling around with inappropriate software… Instead to model this right away I need to find ways for such simple things as WIRES… its rediculous

#11

That’s one of the reasons I find Viacad not as useful…individual segments, while maybe technically reasonable, certainly not production valid.

Try Rhino and export curves as DXF? Rhino wiull import iges from EIM either OSX or Windows.

EI’s biggest short-coming is getting data in and getting data out from other apps. I’ve spent many, many hours finding workable solutions for this sort of thing and constantly hitting up against it.

#12

I don’t have ViaCad with me right now but here is a 36 sided polygon from FormZ exported to DXF (2004) as polylines. Check if this works. I will check tonight with ViaCad for the right settings if it is not solved in the meantine.

Polylines model

#13

Hahaha, that is the fun of the process. Sorry for the frustration. I was trying to see if i could get some work around i came up using C4D. I dont have swage but it came out with 260 vertices i know it is not much but i try.

#14

Jens,

While I respect you wanting to work in EIM, there are quite a few drawing tools in Trestle that could assist you.

There is a snapping grid, insert points, horizontal and vertical align tools, scaling, mirroring, equidistant tools, and predefined shapes. Can you post a picture of what your ribs look like so I could see if its something Trestle could create?

Ultimately, this is why I wanted the Igors to support EPS import in Trestle. It would be ideal in this situation if the rib is a very unique shape or difficult to draw. EPS could be a universal standard. But… you can create any kind of standard poly sided shape you want in Trestle instantly. Just type it in and bang its there.

#15

Jens…here is the poly generator… & equidistant tool

#16

Sorry not for mentioning that they come in as seperated lines, SORRY!

To join simply use the “join curve” tool. It´s located under the white cursor item, the 5th which says “trim”, click on that and go to the 5th menu item there.

Regards
Stefan

#17

Can you give me a clue please? When i import the same file from EIM as .iges into Rhino OSX beta they come in also as 36 segments, like the EIM .sat file for ViaCAD.

Regards
Stefan

#18

With Rhino just marquee select and hit the ‘join’ tool…it’ll join whatever you had selected. Curves, surfaces etc.

#19

Thanks a lot. That´s a pretty fast technique.

Regards
Stefan

#20

Finally I did:

EIM -> iges -> Rhino (stiching) -> DXF -> Transporter -> EI

what a pain… For DXF to work proper each wire must be on a seperate layer to come over to EI as a single group. Have not tried colors though…

Jens