3D Modelling to Printing - Using AM as a CAD Visualisation App

[a.quaihoi]

Hey Guys,

 

got back into AM because I needed to visualise this game pad case I have been developing to communicate with the mechanical / electronic engineers and AM was the tool I tuned to, why ? Because I love it and did not want to learn another app because AM is so good. I was reading about the polygon thread and some of that applied here, but from experience and from this example, I would like to point out that AM is very powerful and with the bonus of now outputting STL files it fills in a huge requirement I had back in the days.

 

From working on this I found somethings which I would love to have implemented - mainly being able to control patches / splines much like you do in Adobe Illustrator and a point align tool much like Illustrator as well, I can over look the crashing, I think we are all used to it by now, but as a first and basic step to allow people to use AM like a cad / 3D for product tool the level of control for accurate modelling by mimicking illustrator like spline / point control and alignment would be a god send. It would cut design times to a quarter - also the boolean thing which I posted about earlier. Those three things would boost the tool set am already has for actual production level modelling - dont tell me to use catia / soildworks - normal people can't afford those apps unless we get them " dubiously " - yep not even rhino - I used all of them and I always come back to AM - " it just works " the way I want it to work despite its bugs.

 

And its awesome to see the polygon preview - what would even be better would be the ability to fix / edit the polygons in that view so that you have a solid models for printing instead of fixing or welding up the holes left by 5 points / hooks etc - which I tent not to use when doing mechanical things anyway - you will se my liberal use of 3 point patches of " triangulated " " polygons " - but still in patch form this model is low detail yet high detail when in polygon view.

 

Just an update of what I did the last couple of weeks, I'll get back into character stuff later, but just showing how else could improve AM and expand it from just character modelling and animation.

 

This product is actually happening and I will do a kick starer campaign to fund its production, I have financed this all myself, everything is done we are just finalising the components, but AM can use these images and other renders I do for their folio to showcase it as " hey look at this guy, he designed this product in AM and you can buy it in a store, wow AM is pretty powerful " - and if it goes well, then I hopefully can lend some financing to add these features to AM AND for a NATIVE Mac version with some more developers to help out Stephan - sounds good ?

 

Also been thinking about VR anybody doing any projects with oculus rift development and AM ?? Please share your experiences.

 

[robcat2075]

I'm glad you're finding A:M useful!

 

-My workflow for putting holes in surfaces is to model the holes first, then strategize an economical way to connect them together and to the edges of the surface.

 

-I think most point-aligning needs can be accomplished with scaling.

 

 

I'll note that Martin has said in the past that A:M was never intended as a CAD tool and wasn't built to support those needs. The exacting nature of true CAD tools was something that A:M's basic nature didn't lend itself to and was outside the stated goal of being a tool for "narrative character animation."

 

If someone finds A:M's tools useful none-the-less he didn't object to that but they weren't likely to spend development time and money into furthering that niche use.

 

He said that long before consumer 3D printing became common. He might look at it differently today but the budget for development is even less now.

 

It's unlikely that Illustrator-style splines would be implemented in A:M. The current spline behavior is the core concept of A:M.

[Fuchur]

...not that we are very far from Illustrator's way of doing that . you are talking about patchfinder right?

 

Anyway and despite what Martin way back said... I find that approach very fastinating and like what you have done very much. please keep us informed at what you are doing and how it turns out.

I myself use A:M for all my modelling for 3d printing and like it very much too.

 

I'd say that kind of stuff surely deserves a place on the website if you have a prototype and an image of that .

 

Well done!

 

See you

*Fuchur*

[pixelplucker]

I occasionally use AM for printing 3d models but not that often. AM is more intended for 3d character animation. The splines won't by design offer the precision required for 3d prototyping of mechanical parts. The poly output via stl is nice but you may need to close surfaces so the parts can be sliced and printed.

 

Another issue with AM is making models with a thickness that has booleans and complex recesses etc. This though possible can be a daunting task in AM because you need to manually model the thickness where as in a cad program you can simply specify a wall thickness. Cost wise it probably isn't worth it for AM to have cad capabilities because the return on investment isn't there in such a field that has so much money behind it and the programmers to back it up.

 

You may want to check a program that I use quite a bit called Moment of Inspiration (moi3d). Price tag is $295 and it is rock solid error free with a very short learning curve. I use it quite a bit and tag my surfaces out into groups, export out an obj and have been importing them into AM as props with the surface groups separate so I can change the attributes on them for rendering.

 

It isn't a bad idea to bang out a conceptual model in AM and use renders of different views to make a cad model.