Rotation Failure

[Bo Atkinson]

With version 9 of formZ, more and  more work-arounds become needed, but this time I'm stumped.  How can one get these two surfaces to enclose the pyramidal space? So that it looks like a pyramidal shape. Version 9.2.01 refuses to allow the snapped rotation result of the left object 

This is actually a work around because tracing the vertices with the V-Line tool produces the same false result, by refusing to separate the two individualized objects in the correct orientation, and by always glueing them as if superimposed as one object alone.

formZ-RotationFailure.fmz

[Justin Montoya]

Hi Bo,

If all you want to do is enclose the pyramidal space, then using the Vector Line tool and point snap with these options should get you there:

[Tech]

5 hours ago, Bo Atkinson said:

With version 9 of formZ, more and  more work-arounds become needed, but this time I'm stumped.  How can one get these two surfaces to enclose the pyramidal space? So that it looks like a pyramidal shape. Version 9.2.01 refuses to allow the snapped rotation result of the left object 

This is actually a work around because tracing the vertices with the V-Line tool produces the same false result, by refusing to separate the two individualized objects in the correct orientation, and by always glueing them as if superimposed as one object alone.

formZ-RotationFailure.fmz

Can you send a screenshot of the Tool Options palette to support@formz.com to see if there's anything enabled that may be causing complications?

[ZTEK]

Hi Bo,

I moved and rotated one of your two trapezoidal objects and was able to stitch them into a solid object without any problem as a check.

Before rotating them, I triangulated them because I realized they are both compound curves.

Also, your snaps are not the best for this kind of operation, which might be the reason for your problem. The snap Snap to Segment is active and Snap to End Point is not. The option Give Guide Snaps Priority is active and Stick To Edges is not. My recommendation is to change these settings.

From my experience, not only working with formZ, snaps like segment, intersection, perpendicular, and tangent, among other fancy ones, need to be managed with caution. Especially when precision and a healthy geometry are necessary.

[ZTEK]

...tetrahedron not trapezoidal!

[¢hris £und]

Bo,

I think ZTEK is right about the triangulation.   I attempted to stitch them together prior to triangulation and after.  The before did not. The after triangulation worked.

I don't think the issue is with the rotation but agree with ZTEK that it is because they are not planar.

If you "show normals" on the object (stitched without triangulating). you will see that it still has 2 faces, but the system doesn't know how to display one of them.  The normals are floating in space.  But one of the faces isn't being displayed despite the information being there.  Even as I attempt to rotate one of the objects into position, its displayed "fold" changes to between the other two points.  Essentially f•Z is seeing the data as being nonsensical and is arbitrarily showing you where it thinks the fold should be.

When I was still building the balloons, I primarily modeled this way (manually building and stitching things together). In OGL display mode, it is difficult to see these conditions.  So, I would have to often flip back and fourth between wireframe and OGL.  primarily working in wireframe. A habit I have not gotten over.

 

[Bo Atkinson]

Thanks all of you for the support. I hope the following story answers each of you well, and explains the problem better. I was actually not forming surfaces or solids, but was working around the defaults to generate curves.

To duplicate my poor results, it is possibly necessary to use my ill-fated M1 Mac Mini  on  OSX 12.1. This Mac has multiple quirks in other apps, even TextEdit, (a built in app). It, (Mac),  also lost my password so I had to reinstall OSX 12.1. I never heard of this before either!

Did anyone have OSX 12.1 running? I can't even update this Mac, the friendly Apple Tech guy said that I probably need a faster connection, faster than my 4Mbs download speed, just to get the OSX Update successfully, so I'm stuck way out in the woods here. My update failed twice, he suspected, due to my download 4Mbs speed limit, even though it was done in the pre dawn hours, on two different days.  I'll probably try it on Windows at some point, but this it not urgent.

So back to the issue. First of all I was in fact attempting to trace with the Vector Line Tool, to make curves, but Formz 9 insists on automatically forming up surfaces instead of actual curves, (so that one has to uncover the surface afterwards, in order to get the curve). This default is new with version 9.

The rotation part seemed a quick alternative until it actually refused to rotate. I would retry this, but I accidentally trashed the original. Perhaps this works better on Windows. The transition to ARM processors leaves us Mac users in a lurch, methinks. 

[Bo Atkinson]

PS- I forgot to emphasize that the Vector Line Tool, refused to trace on two sets of faces, even by use of Lock Reference Plane snapping, to get away from the first object which was generated. I was tracing on a tetrahedron, and wanted to trace out two separate parts of the tetrahedron. It sounds as though Justin succeeded in that, whereas, no matter what I tried, formZ insisted on generating the trace on the one and the same tetrahedron part. It refused to let the whole tetrahedron be covered, as a result. I hope that clarifies it. 

And this is why I stumbled on the rotation problem as a work-around.

Edited April 13, 2022 by Bo Atkinson
And Part

[¢hris £und]

Bo, I too am using a M1 Mac mini with OS 12.01 (not 12.1, I do not see that this is available). And am not seeing the problems you mention.

As far as updating, it should update at 4Mbp/s.   I was able to update my 2012 Pro up to recently with lower speeds than that.  We were lucky to get 1Mbp/s Though, now spaceX has shown me the way. So, can't say specifically to the M1.

Sorry I misunderstood your needs.

 

¢£

 

 

 

[Bo Atkinson]

Chris, I very much appreciate your input, and regret I could not explain it all much more smoothly, in the in the first post. I even managed to send the wrong 'save' of the fmz, and threw out the one ready for the illustrated rotation. It is possibly more complicated than we wish to trouble over. I'll use my old MacPro and formZ 6 if I need too, as it has has simpler tracing with the Vector Line Tool.

Mac support has always been good IMO, but I live too far from the store to get them to analyze the hardware.  I still prefer Mac which I came to buy into, only to get formZ in 1995,  which was  not available on Windows until years later.

The current base download was apparently made into 12.1, but I am stopped from going higher with my MacMini, which is mostly for the internet, anyway, and only for simple things which sometimes are not simple. As the years pass, developers will not be able to support all systems as there will be too many rare combinations of issues cropping up.

 

 

 

[¢hris £und]

Bo, reading through your first post again,

I still think what you are seeing, in both the rotation case and the retrace points is that the display is flipping where is is drawing the "fold". Which of course, you don't care about since you are going to turn the shapes into curves any way.

To be clear, it is an OGL display issue, not a rotation or a tracing of your points.

Though, I do agree that 6 had a simpler snapping methodology.  I have come to really like 9s.  Especially when I turn off the guide snapping.  If I don't that constantly gets in my way.  Though, I don't think guide snapping is impacting you here.  Too, I tend to bump up my numerical accuracy pretty high.   I find that this seriously impacts my ability to snap.  Pretty sure 6 did not have this issue.

 

¢£