In a typical clay prototyping workflow, you might follow these steps:
- Create a model in Alias.
- Mill a clay model from the Alias data.
- Reshape the clay model by hand.
- Digitize the reshaped parts of the clay model.
- Integrate the changes back into the Alias surfaces with the Surface Edit > Claymate tool.
How It Works
The tool works by asking you to select:
- surfaces to modify (corresponding to the changed data),
- modifier curves or surfaces (the digitized, reshaped data), and
- reference surfaces (surfaces that have not changed).
It then uses the modifier curves/surfaces to reshape the original surfaces, while maintaining positional and tangent continuity
with the reference surfaces.
Tip
To streamline the use of the tool, you may want to put the surfaces to modify, the modifier curves/surfaces, and the reference surfaces in different layers.
More Uses
You can also use in other situations that require you to fit surfaces back to modified curves or surfaces. For example:
- Create cross-section profile curves from a surface model.
- Modify the curves.
- Use the tool to fit the original surfaces to the new profile curves.
To use digitized changed data to reshape surfaces on a model
- Pick the surfaces that were changed on the clay version.
- Click the icon , or choose Surface Edit > Claymate from the palette.
The window appears.
Note
If any of the picked objects are invalid for use with , the tool unpicks everything.
- Pick any other surfaces that need to be updated, then click .
- Pick the curves or surfaces that were digitized from the changed sections of the clay model (the modifier curves).
Modifier curves/surfaces that are outside the range are ignored.
- Click .
- Pick all the surfaces on the model that were not changed on the clay version (the reference surfaces) and with which you want
the modified surfaces to maintain positional and tangent continuity.
The tool will maintain continuity with these reference surfaces as it modifies the changed surfaces.
- Click .
uses the settings in the window to reshape the surfaces of the model to match the modification curves.
Note
Usually you will want the option on to see the effects of changing options interactively. If the surfaces involved are very complex, however, updates
may take a long time. Turn off and use the button at the bottom of the window.
-
Tip
Increasing the number of samples allows finer control over the surfaces, but greatly increases the time required to perform
the operation. Calculation time increases linearly with the number of samples on the modifier curves, and with the square
of the number of samples on the target surface.