Plasticity Quick Start | How To Create Complex Surface Details

in this video we're going to be using plasticity to make this contoured handle so stay tuned [Music] hey everyone this is Matt with learn everything about design and in this video we are going to tackle something I just did yesterday in fusion 360. and one of the comments was asking about doing this in plasticity is it easier what is the different workflow Etc so on this video we're going to be making this sort of complex shaped handle using plasticity but there is a catch here we're going to be using the beta version so I'm on a studio license and I get access to the beta version and there have been some updates that have been coming to some of the surfacing or sheet functionality so we're going to talk about that in this video we're going to talk about the differences what doesn't work in the current consumer release or the Indie version and what you can expect is coming soon so to get started I'm going to clear this out and start a brand new design so I need to go back and turn on my edges and my grid and all that fun stuff and then delete the cube just select it and get rid of it we're going to be using a handful of shortcut keys I'll call them out and put them on the screen for you but all of these shortcut keys are the same whether you're using version 1.1 which is the current version you download the 14-day trial of or if you're using this beta version or soon to be released 1.2 version so number seven on the numpad will go to the top and we're just going to be using a spline curve to create sort of the outside shape of the handle right click to accept and then we will create the inside shape of the handle right click to accept we'll rotate select both of these we're going to hit e to extrude and pull them down and then we'll select both curves and hit delete we don't need the curves all we really need is what we see here so the next thing for us to do is determine whether or not we want some additional curvature or influence in The Loft that's going to create the handle and what I mean by that is I can come in and I can shift select these upper edges hit L to Loft and I can simply just use G1 G2 continuity to just change the shape so G1 is tangent and it'll just drive the direction G2 will actually look at the radius of curvature give us a little bit of a smoother look but in general when I did this infusion I had splines on the end to control the shape now this is still a little bit tricky in plasticity if I'm going to be honest there are things that we can do but there is no constraint system we're not driving the tangency of a curve and being able to manipulate it while maintaining that tangency so we have to be a little bit careful so I'm going to select the back edges again holding down shift and then shift d that's going to duplicate those and for now I'm going to hide the two sheets what I'm going to do is select the end points again holding shift and then L on the keyboard is Bridge vertex now Bridge has gotten some updates in plasticity there is going to be some new functionality that comes out with a new command called Bridge surface I believe is going to be released I'm not going to cover anything that isn't in the current version of plasticity but I will talk about where some of the differences or nuances come into play so what we're going to do here is we're going to take a look at G2 continuity on the Inside Edge in G3 on the outside just to kind of push that out a little bit more right click and accept and then get rid of these two lines so if we look at the sheets you can kind of see what we have going on here going to repeat the process on the front so again shift select those two shift d to duplicate and I'm not going to hide this the surfaces or sheets this time but I just want to select the end vertices here L to Loft and then G3 on the outside and G2 on the inside all I'm really doing is I'm making the back part of that handle a little bit thicker just for visual effect here select and delete those two so now that we have this structure in place what we're going to do is select the top edges again holding down shift L to Loft and then we're going to select hold down shift and select so now we've got our guides you'll notice that we have these little G1 dots on the screen now those are not there in the current release you can control the continuity but you're not going to see those G1 G2 G3 dots on the screen it's a really nice indicator but you're not going to visually see those but that's okay we're going to use tangency to drive this we're going to right click to say okay then get rid of the curves because we don't need them anymore now you don't have to get rid of the curves but it certainly helps and I actually don't need these extensions anymore so number seven on the numpad let's go ahead and bring this up one difference or one change that I'm going to make to the fusion 360 version of this and the plasticity version in the fusion version I actually came all the way out to the edge with this first cut but with Fusion I've got a ruled surface I don't actually have a ruled surface here I do have the option to extend the surface so if I select it I can extend this but the problem with this extension here unlike the ruled surface that I used in the fusion example is it's part of the surface here so we'd have to draw a line we'd have to imprint it or split it or cut it or do something else which makes it a little bit trickier so for this example I'm not going to be doing that so just keep that in mind I'm going to be using a line I'm just going to come in slightly come up to the point where I want to make my cut right-click to accept and then go to my spline curve we'll come off of that and simply create the shape we want shift select the original and J to join them together then C to cut and select my target now if I rotate this around I should have this curve I can get rid of and I should have the sheet and I should have that extra little piece there so I don't need it so I'm going to select and delete it keeping everything as clean as possible if you do have geometry you need of course keep it but it becomes really tricky to remember what is what so I'm just going to delete it for our example 7 on the numpad and again go to my spline curve select the edge end come in and come back right click e to extrude to pull this down and once again get rid of that curve because we don't need it so this is the first case or first example here where we need to start to bridge that shape we need to fill it in now generally we have two main tools for this to happen we've got our Loft tool which could partially work here but not great and we do have our patch we have our patch tool but let's go ahead and let's take a look at Loft first so I'm going to select that back Edge shift select this one hit L for Loft and select this as my guide curve now you'll notice the preview disappears and if you're on version 1.1 this is not going to work at all the preview disappears because right now it's trying to drive tangency on all three edges and we just realistically can't do that so I need to make this one G zero and this one g0 as well and then my preview comes back so this ability to create a loft with this triangular section using the edge or a cut edge of my sheet that can't be done in 1.1 but it is in the current beta version so I do expect this to be in the production version 1.2 when it's released what you can do now we're going to hit escape to get off of that but what you can do right now is you can select these edges again holding down shift and hit F to start to type in your find and start to type patch and Patch will let you do this currently so we can change this g0 to G1 and then leave the others at G zero now in the current version you're going to see a blue or a purple dot there you're not going to see G1 G2 G3 you're going to just have that dot and when you click it it'll cycle through continuity so you have to play around with that a little bit but you will notice that we're going to right click to accept and when we take a look here we've got two sheets now if I hide sheet 39 you'll notice it left the original and if I hide sheet 35 it now has this extra little piece added to it so what I'm going to do is I'm going to select this and hit alt and J which is going to allow me to unjoin it I'm going to hit H to hide it and then control select both of those and delete them because I don't need them again just trying to clean things up I'm going to get rid of that one and now we've got a good starting point so 7 on the number pad again spline curve I'm going to come up and just create the Cutaway that I want now this one in my example Fades away sort of disappears into the rest of the handle body so we're going to draw a line over to here shift select and join so now we've got a single curve you do have to be careful with what you select using those default top front and right planes because the first selection if I happen to do it over here and I'll go ahead and do this as an example if I started over here and then I came back and did my spline curve and sort of Drew it over here when we rotate this around this is now at the height of that original selection so you can see it's still planar it's still going to be sort of a flat curve but it is in space where my first selection was that is not true if you happen to make your own construction plane but right now that is true for the default top plane which we use the number seven on the keyboard for so we've got this curve here and I'm going to hit C to cut and select the target body and right click to accept and note that it doesn't work now part of the reason it doesn't work is because it can't cut all the way through this body it ends at this Edge and it just for whatever reason isn't working so we're going to do an alternate method of imprinting that using shift and I then select the body right click and you can see we're able to now create that edge again curve don't need it delete it we're going to select that face we're going to use alt and J to unjoin it and then we need to select it and delete it again we don't need it 7 on the number pad spline curve and come back and create this curve now obviously narrating this takes a little bit longer it's actually not that bad of a process it is better with the newer beta version than it is with the original or the 1.1 that you can get currently so keep that in mind extrude e on the keyboard delete the curve pretty common so here's the second thing that we want to understand that is different about the current version 1.1 of plasticity in this beta version that I'm using so when we create a loft I'm going to go from this Edge shift select this edge here and hit L on the keyboard when we create a loft in the current 1.1 version of plasticity we cannot use the edges of the sheet as a guide rail that is changed in this beta version which is why I'm using it for this example now it doesn't mean that you can't make this happen with the patch tool it just doesn't work with the Loft tool so again you can still do what we're doing here currently with patch but the Loft tool generally would be my go-to for a four side like this so I'm going to select this Edge shift select this Edge and again the preview is gone and the main reason the preview is gone is because it's trying to drive tangency with all the edges and that's not what we want or can have so we're going to click through until we get g0 and do the same thing here again with patch you'll have to play around with this we want tangency at the back we could also Drive curvature continuity back there or curvature continuity up here it does make a drastic change so make sure that you do at least play around and understand what's going on here but again I want at least tangency at the midline because that's when we mirror the entire thing over we want it to be smooth right click and accept so this new Loft different than patch didn't join everything together and make a copy of that original body so now I can just hide the sheet I don't want delete it and select both of these holding down shift and join them together so here the next piece is we're going to add a fillet we're going to see if we can do this so I'm going to select that edge begin pulling it down right click to accept and we'll do the same thing over here select this Edge pull it down and right click to accept now there if we take a look at this there's an option D on the keyboard for fillet distance and that's essentially just the pull out menu this is the number here one difference that Fusion does have that is not available here in plasticity at least not that I'm aware of is the ability to drive the chord length of that fillet now I believe I remember in an older version of plasticity that it may have been there in this current version we've got limit stop points which basically tell us where we can start and end the fillet not really what we want in this case and we've got our chamfer angle and our fillet distance so not really perfect in this instance and the main reason is because the angle between faces is greater right in this area which means that the fillet is going to be wider there and narrower down here in reality I would love to be able to have a chord length option here to keep the fillet a consistent width that would be that would be a nice addition not at the end of not a deal breaker by any means not the end of the world but just keep in mind that there there's one minor dis addition that is different between the example I did in Fusion 360 and the example here I will say that in Fusion we had a lot of trouble with with the Phillips they did produce some pretty bad geometry at the back Edge and that's not a problem here in plasticity it did really well actually creating those fillets so again just a minor difference I want to point out because in the fusion video we did talk about that chord length distance so now we've got it selected we're going to mirror across Z we are going to merge the two halves together and right click to accept so once we have this I'm going to go up into toggle off my axes I'm going to put it in perspective I'm going to show the edges or hide the edges I mean and just take a look at the result so as we bring this around so you can see it's kind of got a triangular shape because we use G3 continuity to drive that curve on the edge and G2 on the front and that gave us that wider section at the back and we rotate this around you can see that we've got a sharp edge here because we didn't add a fill it we certainly can go back and do that pull that in and just blend it but you can see here that it blends really nicely this Edge right here disappears because we were able to use G2 continuity we can go in and give it that red color that we all like and I think that looks pretty good I'm trying to move it around where that light spot is and I think everything looks pretty good so I'm happy with the results I'm happy with how long this took and I've had a lot of questions people asking should they go to plasticity for surfacing and up until now I I had said not quite yet if surfacing is what you want to do you can certainly do it with plasticity but there are things that I knew were coming in this you know most recent version that would certainly help things like being able to use the edge of a surface as a guide rail for a loft that is a big deal where before we had to have curves which meant that we had to either use the patch tool or we had to go in and duplicate those edges and then it just kind of got a little messy so now it's much easier for us to build these nice smooth surfaces that go across the mirror line and the fillets are added really nicely the geometry that we're adding looks pretty good and I'm really happy with these results so that is essentially the same model infusion and in plasticity so hopefully that answers some questions for people that have been asking if you have any questions on this or any more comparisons again I tried to point out the things that were different between this beta version that I'm using here and the current version so you were aware of that but again if you have any questions please let me know as always thanks for watching we'll see in the next one [Music]

Channel: Learn Everything About Design

Views: 13,419

Keywords: cad, design, plasticity, cad for artists, surface, surfacing, sheets, complex, handle, patch, loft, continuity, how to, tutorial

Id: 1rQdlOgFFyk

Length: 17min 33sec (1053 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023