ZW3D CAD Tips:How to Design a Product with Smooth Connection Surface

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ZW3D CAD Tips:How to Design a Product with Smooth Connection Surface

During the product design process, surface quality of products is very important. How to design smooth surfaces in ZW3D? Or what are the skills of surface design? Generally, following aspects will trouble you:

 

> How to create tangent 3D curve?

 

> How to divide surface geometry?

 

> How to create tangent surface?

 

> How to check surface quality?

 

To tackle down the barriers, we’ll guide you with a typical surface case step by step.

 

 

Figure 1: Surface Product

 

Step 1: Draw the profile curves with the sketch. Then use them to create the surface.

 

Firstly, create the sketch1 on XY plane. It is an ellipse with size of 280mm*210mm.

 

Then, create the sketch2 on YZ plane. It is a semicircle with radius 40mm, and the center of the circle is fixed on the ellipse of sketch1.

 

After that, perform the same operations to create the sketch3 on XZ plane. The center of semicircle is on the ellipse and radius is 20mm. 

 

Lastly, draw the sketch4 on XY plane. It is a quarter of ellipse, which end points are located on the sketch2 and sketch3, respectively. Sketch5 is similar with sketch4.

 

All sketch profiles are shown in Figure 2.

 

                          

 
Figure 2: Sketch Profile

 

Step 2: Extrude the sketch2 / 3 / 4 / 5 to create a surface as the reference surface, as in the Figure 3(left). This is the basic preparation.

 

Step 3: Create surface with the UV curve mesh command and sketch curves. Boundary constraints should be defined as G1 continuity, which means tangent constraint; see Figure3. After that, the extruded surfaces could be deleted.

 

                                  

 

 Figure 3: UV Curve Surface

 

Step 4: Draw the sketch6 on XZ plane. It is a quarter of circle with radius of 18mm. Then extrude it to create a face; see Figure 4. This surface will be the tangent boundary constraint as well.

 

 

 Figure 4: Extrude face cut

 

The first mail surface has been created. Next, how to create a smooth connection surface?

 

First of all, it’s vital to create tangent connection curves and reasonable split curve. Let’s follow up others steps to design this high quality connection surface.

 

Step 5: Apply Blend curve feature to create smooth tangent curves; see Figure 5.

 

  

              

 

Figure 5: Blend Curves

 

Step 6: Insert the sketch7 on XY plane. Firstly, pick the blend curves to define reference geometry. Then, draw a horizontal line through the end point of one reference line, and define it as construction line; see Figure 6.

 

 

 Figure 6: Reference geometry

 

Step 7: Draw an arc to connect the reference lines, which is tangent with construction line. The result is shown in Figure 7.

 

                                  

  Figure 7: Arc split curve

 

Step 8: Create an extruded face with this arc. Then, use this face to trim the UV surface; see Figure 8.

 

 

                                     

                                    

 

                 Figure 8: Trim UV surface

 

Step 9: Extrude the blend curve to create the needed reference faces. Then use UV curve mesh tool to generate tangent connection surface; see Figure 9.

 

                        

  
 Figure 9: Tangent connection surface

 

Step 10: Reverse the face direction, and then perform mirror operations. After that, you will get the final shape; see Figure 10.

 

      

 

Figure 10: Final shape

 

Step 11: Hide the edges of the shape and you can see the smooth product. Use the analyze faces” command to check the surface quality. The result is shown in Figure 11.

 

      

 

 Figure 11: Check surface quality

 

Through this surface case, we can learn how to create a product with smooth connection surface. With the reasonable curve to split the surface; with the reference surfaces to define the boundary constraint; when you master these skills, you could flexibly design the high quality surface model with these basic functions (Sketch, Blend curve, Extrude, UV curve mesh, Trim, Mirror…).

 

Try ZW3D, you can find more.

 

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