surfacing

[rburk]

we are using Creo 9

best way convert these segmented surfaces to 1 continuous surface ?

thanks

Rich

[tbraxton]

You should post the model you are working with here so that specific methods can be applied to your geometry.

What are you starting with, native Creo features, import geometry?  What is the motivation behind eliminating the patches, this could determine what is needed.

Generally, you would need to create higher order (curvature continuous (G2) or higher) construction geometry that serves as a parent to the surfaces. If it was built in Creo then I suspect the method used to create some of the geometry would need to be done differently.

[bbrejcha]

The approach you did looks great.  You lined up the lines *we call federation lines neatly and in an organized way.   Many people that come for surfacing training will point out that you can get rid of the federation lines by using composite curves. *particularly the approximate option.  Like Thomas mentioned it depends upon what your trying todo.  Although I used an 'approximate composite' curve an a project this week, its not the desired method for doing things.  It should be reserved to when your team modeled something and your intension is to not remodel the geometry. 

To me your approach is ideal minus the triangles.  Like tbraxon says upload your model so we can have a more carful conversation maybe over teams/zoom.  Id like to catch up w/ tbraxton as well. 

Bart Brejcha designengine.com

[rburk]

I am trying to make a case around the shape with uniform thickness ~1mm or so

with all the small edges it fails 

[tbraxton]

How accurate does the shell need to be? Must it interface such that the inner wall of the shell should be congruent with all surfaces of the import data?

After looking at this I would say that you should try "fix" the source data that you are importing. If you don't have control of that then this will be tedious. You could try using the import data doctor to correct import translation errors, but this requires that you have an understanding of how Creo works and surface modeling concepts to do it in a reasonable amount of time.

The import feature has issues that will make creating your objective difficult. Minimizing the "segmented" surfaces will not necessarily support creating the 1 mm thick skin. There are surface facets that have dihedrals at shared boundaries which will pose issues. If you evaluate the Gaussian curvature of many of the surfaces in the import, they are also not built to make offset easy.

The green edges marked below are not tangent while the grey edges indicate tangency across boundaries. Note that even some rounds are not tangent which is not likely design intent but an artifact of the import. If you have to work with this import data, then I would suggest copying key surfaces without the round on the top and offsetting them individually at the required value and then merging them together to get the outside of the shell. Keep in mind that if the part should be symmetric (the import is not) about a mirror plane then you would only need to build half of the surfaces and then mirror them.