Hello out there in AutoCAD land. Here we are presenting another CAD clip on AutoCAD 2007 3D stuff and I had a question on one of my blogs from my buddy Panos who has asked if we could do a CAD clip on applying a poly line profile along the edge of a solid and the answer of course is yes by all means and the tools we will use, we will just use the Sweep tool, so I have got the completed project here. I am just going to switch over into little different mode to make it look nice but what we can do is we can go and take a profile okay and take a profile just to close poly line like this.
We can take that shape and we can sweep that along an edge of a solid like over here and we end up with something that looks like this. I am going to do a shift middle mouse button, pan over okay. So there we can take, I am going to use my control button to bury that down there and not have it dock.
There is the profile, here is the solid and there is the sweep. Now the key here is where your base point is on your profile of your poly line and the poly line we are going to also draw a poly line around the top edge of this object and the direction for which the poly line goes is significant. You will see that, there is a bit of trial and error and then over here I have done the same type of thing where I have taken this shape over here and then swept that along the edge of this object and I end up with that type of effect shift middle mouse button over there.
So all different ways that we can do this so I am just going to go back here to a top view and what I am going to do is I am going to take and I am going to move this. Now I have a poly line that is underneath there. I am going to say M for move and use a shift space bar to toggle between. That did not do it. I thought I had a poly line under there okay apparently I do not so that is not a problem.
We will draw a new one. I am going to go back to the wire frame and top view here and I am just going to draw some lines. I am going to go line to start from scratch, it does not matter. And then maybe I am going to go in here and say fillet radius one, radius that maybe fillet this, give it a bit of style okay.
And then what I am going to do is take these and join them into one poly lines. I am going to use my P edit and grab this and join all of these up and hit enter, enter. Now I have a closed poly line and I can go back to my 3D view and all I am going to do here is, I am going to take that and I am going to use my great push press pull or we can extrude it but I am going to use press pull and I am going to hover over here and I am just going to pick and drag that poly line up and I am going to take it and move it over here. I have also got that poly line there.
I am going to take this poly line and move it from the end point of there up to there. Now remember I kind of drew that poly line in this direction and sometimes you have to play with the direction of the poly line itself but there is now a poly line up there. So I can take any, this is again just to close poly line it does not matter where it is located in plan. And I am going to in now and I am going to sweep that along the edge using that poly line. If I wanted I could erase this and redraw my poly line it does not matter okay as long as you have a poly line along that edge.
The next thing I usually do is give this a little bit a color or something like just for the heck of it make it show up a little nicer. Maybe go with the blue, close that off. Maybe I am going to put myself on a different layer so then when that sweep gets created it comes in on a different layer and in a different color.
So now what I am going to do is I am going to go up to here and I am going to use my sweep tool. Sweep, it is going to say select an object to sweep. So I am going to pick on here and I am going to hit enter. Select the path, I am going to hover over here and use my shift space bar to toggle object cycle to get the right object. I hit in enter it sweeps that object around there.
And that is really it. The only thing is you might not get the result you want right away because of the way this object is drawn and the direction of the poly line. If we go back to our top view, you might try experimenting by maybe mirroring this over here and then erasing this guy and then try and just see what your result will be in this case.
Okay let us erase this. Let us do another sweep here, enter shift space bar to toggle. Enter and then notice that it has swept it but swept it going on the wrong side. Now maybe that is what you wanted. The other option of course is to play with your base point command. Do a sweep, pick this enter and then type B for base point and maybe make this B the base point and then shift space bar to toggle through, enter and you might get a different result because I have moved my base point.
So base point, when you do this. Going to go on perspective mode here and kind of look neat. So when you do your sweep, make sure you have a poly line. It does not have to be closed as long as you have a poly line along the edge and when you go sweep that object, you can use you base point option, you can scale and twist and maybe go review. We have a separate CAD clip just on the sweep tool itself but the key any solid object all you have to do is trace around it with a poly line and then sweep your poly line. Close poly line profile around that using base point and that is about. End up with a cool kind of parappet effect like this if that is kind of what you were looking for.
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