I am working on a project to model a series of WWI aero engines made by Mercedes in Germany. I decided to use Amapi Pro 7.52 and have just completed the first major construction, the cylinder. Here's a picture of it --
And here is the cylinder duplicated to show what the top-end of one of these engines will look like --
I'm very pleased with progress so far; the intention is to continue modeling in Amapi and then import the parts into Carrara 6 for assembly and rendering.
I have a question for the more experienced artists here. You can see that the cylinder is a basic hull with different features protruding from it. This hull is a Gordon surface. The real hull is welded steel stampings and forms a water jacket over a cast steel piston cylinder. So anything protruding from the hull has a weld seam at the point where it breaks the surface of the hull. I've tried to model those weld seams here.
Most of the time it's impossible to form the weld seam BREP from a chamfer -- the geometry of the curving break line is too convoluted. So I cut the surface of the hull with a cylindrical volume, then did a double sweep from the cut hole to a terminating curve. The resulting weld seam BREP was then welded to it's corresponding part. Overall, this was time consuming but worked well.
However, I keep thinking that there must be a way to project a curve onto the surface of the hull, grab it, and pull it out to form the protruding feature. Then the hull, weld seam and protrusion would be a single part with smoother transitions. Does anyone know if this is a possible construction technique? How would I do it in Amapi?
BTW Thomas, Amapi is the best!!!
It is a truly great modeling tool and perfectly suited to this kind of project. I enjoy using it every time!!! I'm so used to the interface that when I go into Carrara I'm always a bit lost since I keep trying to use Amapi key strokes and mouse moves -- and they don't work. A wonderful product.