Tutorial series: Introducing Shapr3D basics
What you'll learn
Start creating the 3D motorcycle frame by adding ‘On Curve at Point’ construction planes and using the sweep tool to follow the parameters you set out. You get more familiar with Shapr3D’s Selection-Based Interface which auto-suggests tools to match your selection, making modeling faster.
Transcript
00:01
The first thing that I intend to do with this is to create a head tube. And there are two ways to create a head tube. You could revolve it or you could extrude it. In this case, extruding is going to show off a little more skill. So that's the one I'm going to use in this situation. Construction plane, change the type to on curve at point. And it'll be on that curve at that point.
00:31
Click Done. Now I've got a construction plane up here.
00:38
using right mouse button and drag to rotate the view. And I'll open a sketch on the newly created plane. I can see the center point right there, that tiny dot. Not sure if it shows up on your display, but it'll show as plane intersection. And I'll drag out a circle, put a dimension on it of inch and a quarter.
01:05
Get into an isometric view using either Ctrl 1 or double click on the cube. Then you can select inside the circle, drag the circle down and make this a 10 inch extrusion.
01:23
There are a couple other things we could have done here. If we had made two concentric circles, then we could extrude the thickness of the tube all at the same time without needing to come back later with a shell feature. But it's up to you on how you want to use this. If you have tubes of different thicknesses, it's better if you create the thickness explicitly in the extrude feature rather than with the shell because shell is going to make a consistent thickness everywhere.
01:53
If you have a variable thickness on a single tube, you might want to use the Revolve feature instead of the Extrude because then you can shape a different cross section for the Revolve. The next tube is going to be created with a sweep and we're going to replace this straight line top tube with something that has a little bit of a curve to it. So let's create a sketch on this plane.
02:17
And we're going to speed up the sketching process here a little bit. You don't need to see this again. You've already seen all the details of how this works.
02:30
The sweep feature consists of two components. One is the sweep cross section and the other is the path or the spine as it's referred to in the Shapr3D interface. Let's make sure we get both ends of the spine nailed down properly.
02:53
The cross section of the sweep should be perpendicular to one end of the spine. To create that situation, we'll make another plane like we did before. Before I do that though, I'm going to turn off the body because sometimes it's difficult to select items that you need through a solid body. So let's add a construction plane of the type on curve at point on this curve at that point.
03:23
Now you notice that we're getting a lot of things on the screen. It's getting very busy up here. If we look at this items list, you can select all items and see everything that you've done to this point. These are all the pieces of geometry that you've created one way or another, whether it's a sketch or a plane or a 3D body. On the other side is the history list, which shows the order in which you've created things.
03:51
and it will add things like operations that you've performed, such as extrude. The extrude in the history list is what created the body in the item list. So because things are getting kind of busy over here right now, I'm going to sort out my items and just look for the planes that I've created. Plane 1 is kind of getting in the way of plane 2, so I'm just going to turn off plane 1 so we can work with plane 2 directly.
04:21
the same as deleting Plane 1. Because this is a history-based software, you need to keep all the things that you've created along the way. If you start deleting things that you've used, you'll run into problems with your features losing references, and you'll see a lot of errors and things like that. Get in the habit of turning things on and off rather than deleting items. Let's select the plane, open a sketch, create a circle.
04:50
Again, there's going to be a dot here that says plane intersection. Maybe hard to see. This one is going to be a one inch diameter. And let's get out of the sketch. Use control one to get into an isometric view. Now, what I want to do is to select my cross section and my path before I start the command.
05:18
for suite. This is what Shapr3D refers to as SBI, Selection Based Interface. It's where you select the items that you want to work with before you select the tool that you want to use on those items. The opposite would be to select the suite tool first, then select the cross section and the path. So let's see how both methods work.
05:44
Let's start with what I consider the basic way, which is select the tool first. This is basic because the software gives you tips to step you through the process. So select face or close sketch. And that would be this.
06:03
Then we hit next. The tip changes, select lines or curves for spine. And when Shapr3D says spine, they mean the path for the sweep. So let's select this. And we have to select each of these items individually and then click done. Okay, that's one way to do it. It was relatively quick and easy. Let's control Z to undo. The more advanced method would be
06:33
to select the cross section first, Shift select the path. And one of the items that we get here is sweep. Let's just keep selecting the path because we know we're gonna need to do that eventually anyway. And when we hit the sweep tool, it automatically knows what to do with the items that we've selected and it creates the geometry. I think you'll agree.
06:58
that the second method is a lot faster. And if you weren't quite sure what tool to use with that selection, Shapr3D narrowed down the selection in the tools list. Just be aware of the selection based interface and that you can pre-select items before you tell it what tool that you're using.
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About the instructor
Matt Lombard is an independent product development professional,
working in the field for 30 years. He has done a variety
of work from plastics design and surfacing work to writing
instructional and reference materials and writing about
the engineering technology industry. Matt has also served
as CAD Admin, PDM implementor, and engineering process
consultant.