{"id":21883,"date":"2018-10-28T10:00:56","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/?p=21883"},"modified":"2018-10-17T10:00:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T14:00:49","slug":"how-to-transform-a-solid-object-into-a-complex-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/2018\/10\/how-to-transform-a-solid-object-into-a-complex-surface.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOLIDWORKS includes many powerful toolsets that enable designers to start from a basic set of features to more demanding processes. In this video, I\u2019ll demonstrate a technique that enables users to control a solid object and transform it into a complex surface. By harnessing the unique Dome and Deform SOLIDWORKS offers, we can move from a simple designing approach into one that will take seconds to accomplish.<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\">\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" src=\"https:\/\/fast.wistia.net\/embed\/iframe\/qrvq6y5mol?dnt=1#?secret=BdrWXaTdMV\" data-secret=\"BdrWXaTdMV\" title=\"Wistia video player\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"960\" height=\"540\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h1>Video Transcript<\/h1>\n<p>Hi everyone, my name is Jackie and in this video, I\u2019m going to show you how to generate a triangulated surface on top of a domed surface. I\u2018ll be demonstrating all the features in SOLIDWORKS that\u2019ll accomplish this along with the strategy that I used to model and setup the surfaces beforehand. Let\u2019s take a look!<\/p>\n<p>The first thing we\u2019ll need to get started is a surface that\u2019ll be adequate enough for this project. Therefore, I\u2019ve decided that the route that I\u2019ll be taking is to generate the surfaces first via a lofted solid. This can easily be done by drawing two sketches and then afterwards, creating the lofted geometry. Notice that I chose the solid route and that I decided to add a couple more lofted profiles positioned in a way that it\u2019ll fill in this triangular path. The reason is that in the next steps, we want to ensure that SWX has the easiest path to multiply this group of lofts.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.alignex.com\/hs-fs\/hubfs\/blog\/How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-1.jpg?t=1537794151407&amp;width=555&amp;name=How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-1.jpg\" alt=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" width=\"555\" height=\"312\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Before doing this, I\u2019ll create a new sketch of a rectangle that\u2019ll ensure we\u2019ll have enough of these bumps to fill in this area. I just noticed a problem so let\u2019s take a moment to explain why we need to do this. The Fill Pattern requires a Solid Body, hence, the solid route we chose before. But the issue comes from how the loft is currently separated into 3 bodies. To demonstrate, I\u2019ll attempt to combine these bodies and SWX is going to bark at us. This is due to a phenomenon labeled as zero thickness geometry. A very simple trick is to create extra material that shares the same profile but instead of combining the edges, we\u2019re going to combine the faces. The fill pattern works by simply picking the one body and entering the correct dimensions. This can then be all combined into one single body.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.alignex.com\/hs-fs\/hubfs\/blog\/How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-2.jpg?t=1537794151407&amp;width=555&amp;name=How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-2.jpg\" alt=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" width=\"555\" height=\"312\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Now that we finished the first part, the second part is to build the curved surface to wrap this surface around. To do this in the most minimalistic way, I\u2019ll be using the Dome feature by modeling a very simple cylinder. The dome will ensure that the surface is completely smooth from the face up and that we\u2019ll maintain a nice transition between the flat and the curve.<\/p>\n<p>Before we start the process, I want to mention that currently, our two bodies are still solids, but the next part, we\u2019re going to transform the solids by simply offsetting the surfaces we want. This idea comes from the fact that we did want surfaces all along, but it was much easier to model them as solids.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.alignex.com\/hs-fs\/hubfs\/blog\/How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-3.jpg?t=1537794151407&amp;width=555&amp;name=How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-3.jpg\" alt=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" width=\"555\" height=\"312\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The final step is to deform this surface on top of the dome. \u00a0We\u2019ll select the surface push option along with the other two surfaces. There are a couple of limitations that we\u2019ll need to keep an eye on. By simply rotating the surface around, we notice that deformation occurs due to the direction of pull being from the top. We simply wouldn\u2019t be able to take the surface and wrap it around without this occuring. But also to note would be how relatively close the surfaces line up. This is due to the deviation setting that lets us place the surface as close as possible to the dome without it falling too far outside.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.alignex.com\/hs-fs\/hubfs\/blog\/How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-4.jpg?t=1537794151407&amp;width=555&amp;name=How-to-Transform-a-Solid-Object-into-a-Complex-Surface-Image-4.jpg\" alt=\"How to Transform a Solid Object into a Complex Surface\" width=\"555\" height=\"312\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lastly, I\u2019ll trim the surface out just to keep the area we deformed. The surface can be used gently to model the shape we want back into a solid. Using a boss-extrude with any surface condition, we\u2019ve gone from the surface back into a solid.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for reading! Don&#8217;t forget to check out the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.alignex.com\/\">Alignex Blog<\/a>\u00a0for more great tech tips just like this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SOLIDWORKS includes many powerful toolsets that enable designers to start from a basic set of features to more demanding processes. In this video, I\u2019ll demonstrate a technique that enables users to control a solid object and transform it into a<\/p>\n... <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/2018\/10\/how-to-transform-a-solid-object-into-a-complex-surface.html\">Continued<\/a>","protected":false},"author":371,"featured_media":21895,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[144],"class_list":["post-21883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tips-tricks","tag-tech-tips"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/371"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21883"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21902,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21883\/revisions\/21902"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.solidworks.com\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}