Carpet/Vinyl Covering

Hi

I am trying to design a wooden speaker cabinet that is covered with carpet
and a metal chassis inserted.
The cabinet part is easy, the metalwork part is easy, but because the
cabinet is carpet covered, it will add around 4mm to the inside of the
cabinet (thickness of the carpet, where it is pulled under and fixed.)
At the moment I can't see an easy way of showing the carpet and I have a 4mm
gap between the metal work and the woodwork which in theory the carpet will
fill. if designing the metalwork in context of the assembly, it's not easy
to allow for the extra carpet.

Q. Does anyone have a bright idea how to allow for the carpet thickness?

Q. Is it possible to 'Skin' something? as on some character 3d modellers?

or indeed, am I just missing something.

Thanks

Rich

 

You might try using surfacing commands. I have not tried the below but this
is how I would approach it.

1. insert a new part into your assembly & edit that part.
2 Then use the offset surface command to offset all the walls at a value of
0 (zero) -- which basically will copy them.
3. open the new part in it's own window -- should make the rest of the steps
easier
4. *OPTIONAL* Then use the knit command to knit all the surfaces together
forming a water tight seal. you may have to manually construct some
surfaces to get knit to work & form a single surface.
5. Finally use the thicken command at a value of 4mm to get a solid shell
(carpet) -- if you did not do step 4 or could not get it work you will need
to run the thicken command on each surface individually.

Hope this helps.
Steve Tietz

 

Wow! thanks Steve and John. That sounds just what I am after, I'm off to
play ;-)

thanks again

Rich

 

You might also be able to try 'shell outward' a configuration of your inside
peice- its a little known/used part of the shell command that will generally
give you better edges and geometry (and an easier to work with model) than
the thickened surface.. Then you would have two instances of that component
in the assembly, one as the configuration for the inside thingy, and the
outer as the shell config representing the carpet. If it is critical to
keep seperate files, you can also use all sorts fo in-context/insert base
part techniques to start a new part form the old - the shell outward would
then go in that part.

 

Thanks Edward

I never knew you could do that. I'll try both methods.

Thanks again

Rich

 

I can successfully offset the surfaces but when I go to thicken it, I get a
unable to thicken the surface' error. It happens whether or not I select
merge or restrict the feature scope. Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks

Rich

 

Edward

I can't seem to get the outward shell to work. It always seems to do
exactly the same whether 'shell outward' is slected or not! must be doing
something dumb...

Rich

 

To help figure out where the problem is, try doing a very thin thicken. If
that works try intermediate values until you see where the limit is, then
look at your thickest possible part to find likely problem areas.

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems
"take the garbage out, dear"

 

Jerry

I tried that already, it won't thicken at all, regardless of the thickness.

ah. further testing reveals it will only thicken when I select only external
or internal faces to offset and not both. seems a bit dumb but at least it
now works. I'll try some more later.

thanks everyone.

Rich