Repair and refine a form body

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Repair and refine a foreign body.

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After completing this video, you'll be able to

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use repair body, use, make uniform

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finish a form and edit a converted form

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in fusion 3 60. We want to begin with the supply data set, repair and refine dot F 3D.

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In some cases,

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when you have a free form model that won't be displayed as a smooth display,

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it generally means there's a problem.

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Now, there are a few things that happen with free form models that can cause problems

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in some instances.

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It's because there are individual vertices that are merged or welded together

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and the design just can't be displayed as a smooth design.

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In other cases,

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you might find that you have a bigger problem where you have

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some error or issue points inside of the design or potentially overlapping faces

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for this design.

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We're going to begin by going to utilities display mode and

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just making sure that we don't see anything in smooth display.

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After that, we're gonna try to go to utilities and repair body

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when we select the design and we try to use repair body, nothing can be done.

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It's not able to fix anything

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And in this case,

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the main reason is because we've got this

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single vertex intersection point between two bodies.

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So what we need to do is manually make some

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fixes or adjustments before we can use these tools.

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If we go to modify and weld vertices, we can begin welding vertices together

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and putting the design into a state where it can be repaired.

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Now you'll notice in this case,

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we have an opening or a hole but we are able to see it in smooth display.

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Now,

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we do have these areas that are somewhat pinched.

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And if we go to utilities and repair body,

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you can see that these are listed as star points in a

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design like this.

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A star point displayed in yellow is not an issue

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or an error or problem that needs to be fixed.

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If it's displayed in red, it's considered an error star.

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We also have T points and these are points where we

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have an individual edge ending in the middle of another edge.

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Now, while these T points are generally OK in designs, in some instances,

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they may present as a red icon

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which means that it needs to be fixed because of some geometry issue

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for our design. We're gonna say OK, because now we have a smooth design,

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we're gonna select and delete this edge

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and we're gonna go to modify and fill hole,

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select the opening

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toggle through the different options that we have and

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figure out which one's gonna be the best.

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You'll notice that most of these are producing issues or problems in our design.

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We're gonna say, ok,

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go to utilities repair body

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and notice that each of these corners are star points.

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But once again, they're not problematic.

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There's nothing that needs to be fixed here,

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even though we've got a crease or a ripple in our design.

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When you get to a design that has problems like this,

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you need to make some decisions on how to manually fix it.

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Now, once again, we have the option to delete edges.

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But before we go there, let's go to modify and insert point.

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We're going to carry this edge

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up and over the design, finding the midpoint or close to the midpoint on each edge.

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And we'll say, OK,

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once we have the edge of our handle carry up,

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we're gonna select

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and delete some of these other additional edges

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and then go to modify and weld vertices.

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And we want to note that there is a vertex in the middle of this edge.

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We're gonna

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bring that back,

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say OK

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and try fill hole one more time.

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When we fill this hole, we're going to select fill star and say, OK,

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when we do a film star, the design still doesn't look great,

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but we've now filled this hole and it's a little bit smoother.

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Let's try the utilities and repair body one more time

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and note now that we've got an error star.

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When we have an error star,

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we can select the auto repair option and allow it to fix that issue.

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You can see here. Now, the design looks quite a bit smoother.

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We have a couple of star points where we have five edges coming together.

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But these are generally OK.

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They do cause problems in geometry in some cases if you're not careful.

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But overall that looks OK,

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there are some other problems with this design.

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For example,

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the distance between these edges here is pretty close while

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the rest of the design is pretty well spread out.

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So I'm gonna go to utilities and make uniform, select the body and say OK,

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and allow it to spread those edges out a bit

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more and get closer to a more uniform distribution.

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This will have an effect on the overall shape of your design,

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but it gives us much better curvature.

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Keep in mind that there are things you wanna do manually.

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And in some cases you want to use these automated tools to help smooth things out

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so far. This looks OK.

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I'm going to select finish form which is gonna convert my

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free form body into a surface body because it was open.

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If we decide that we want to close this design off,

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we can do that using manual tools like surface tools, we can patch the end.

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But if we decide that we want to go back to our free form model,

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we can go to the timeline, double click and we can modify the design here.

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We can fill in these areas by using tools like fill hole.

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But if we're trying to get a planar face on the end,

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even if we use, keep creases,

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it's oftentimes better for us to do this with surface tools

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in the design environment.

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However, we can also use tools like thicken,

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we can select a free form body

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and we can thicken this design in 3D.

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Keep in mind that when we thicken a 3D free form model,

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we now have free form edges on the inside

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and the outside that can be controlled individually.

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This can mean that you can design yourself into a

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situation where you have a non consistent wall thickness.

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There are times where the design calls for a non uniform wall thickness.

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But in some cases,

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you might opt to use the thickened feature after you've converted your model.

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Remember that freeform modeling is direct modeling and no history is captured.

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So we're gonna undo the thicken,

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we're gonna finish the form

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and we're going to continue to use the patch tool

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to fill in the ends. We're going to right click and repeat the patch at the bottom

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and then we can stitch all of these individual surfaces together.

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And we can say, OK,

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at any point in time,

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we can decide to go back to our free form model and we can make changes.

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For example,

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we can box select that entire end and we can decide

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that we want this to be a little bit shorter.

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We can say, OK,

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finish the form.

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And we can see now that we've adjusted the

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model and because our edges are still the same,

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even though they're in a new position,

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the patch was able to be rebuilt

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and everything stitched back together as a solid body

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working with freeform models can take a bit of time to get used to

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but always make sure that you take the time

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to review the geometry at the freeform model level.

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Make sure that you're trying to work on

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a consistent layout of all those edges and faces

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and try to avoid issues where you're introducing bad geometry into certain areas.

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You want to avoid star points when possible, they're not always able to be removed.

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But in some cases, you can decide where there will be on your design

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and that will help the curvature blend a little bit better.

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Always remember that you do have tools like repair body and make uniform

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that can help smooth out your design just a little bit more.

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At this point, you can continue to play around with this free form shape,

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but that's as far as we're going to take it in this video.

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So make sure that when you're done, you do save your design before moving on