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alvarado1357  
#1 Posted : Friday, June 26, 2009 12:47:41 PM(UTC)
alvarado1357

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 6/26/2009(UTC)
Posts: 4

Greets all,

I'm learning how to use CAD as part of tooling up to produce custom guitars using a cnc router. At this point, I have about 4 hours of experience over a 24 hour period with CAD, all of it using ViaCAD. (I did try AutoCAD in the early 90's, but that's another story...)

I don't need photorealistic rendering, etc.; just accurate models of the guitar bodies and necks that I can transfer to my CAM software. I've already sorted out how to extrude a 2D body profile, and as the attached image shows, a neck profile.

At this point, my objective is simply to ensure that ViaCAD can make the shapes I need. After I'm done with this proof of concept stuff, I can get to working on fullsize models for export to CAM, something I expect to take a bit of time.

I'm hung up, however, on creating the transition from the neck to the neck tenon, the most complex curve, it appears, on a flat-topped solid body guitar (transitioning the headstock to the neck may be a contender). It's the nonsolid area in the attached image. I'm sure that I'm missing something, or doing something incorrectly, but not sure just what.

Thanks in advance for sharing your expertise!
File Attachment(s):
guitar neck exercise.vc3 (36kb) downloaded 6 time(s).

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alvarado1357  
#2 Posted : Friday, June 26, 2009 3:50:03 PM(UTC)
alvarado1357

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 6/26/2009(UTC)
Posts: 4

Here's another example of the troublespot; I refined one of the curves, and added lines that should make it clear what the solid shape should be. Still no luck getting a solid out of this though.
File Attachment(s):
guitar neck exercise2.vc3 (13kb) downloaded 5 time(s).

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Tim Olson  
#3 Posted : Friday, June 26, 2009 4:15:49 PM(UTC)
Tim Olson

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Was thanked: 499 time(s) in 353 post(s)
Here is a quicktime movie showing a possible solution in ViaCAD 2D/3D.

I used the cover surface, divide at location, and stitch to solid tools.

To improve the tangency between the two bodies, I changed the circle to a control spline so that I could tweak the slope where the bodies joined. You may want to run some section cuts through the join to see if this is acceptable.

http://www.csi-concepts.com/Demo/videos/neck.mov


Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
unique  
#4 Posted : Friday, June 26, 2009 4:33:35 PM(UTC)
unique

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 6/24/2008(UTC)
Posts: 591

Originally Posted by: alvarado1357 Go to Quoted Post
Here's another example of the troublespot; I refined one of the curves, and added lines that should make it clear what the solid shape should be. Still no luck getting a solid out of this though.


Some of your geometry wasn't great...I re-drew some of it as well as introducing some new splines. Try to avoid duplicate lines too?

This is hopefully one way of getting close to what you need...

Hope it helps;)
File Attachment(s):
guitar-ph-SAT.zip (19kb) downloaded 6 time(s).
unique attached the following image(s):
Geom.jpg (13kb) downloaded 6 time(s).

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alvarado1357  
#5 Posted : Friday, June 26, 2009 5:07:43 PM(UTC)
alvarado1357

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 6/26/2009(UTC)
Posts: 4

Tim, Unique:

Brilliant! I did notice and remove the misfit and duplicate lines after posting my followup post, but it still didn't resolve my challenge; watching Tim's video and looking at Unique's solid part certainly did, though. Many thanks to both of you.

I'll be spending some time studying that video and the part, and try using control splines to work through the neck volute and headstock transition next. I have alot to learn, but this software certainly seems capable of doing everything I need, for a fraction of the cost associated with Rhino and SW.

Thanks again for your help and time!

EDIT: I put what I learned into use, and got the results I was looking for. Still a long way to go (notice the failure of the extruded headstock to flow into the neck profile on the back of the neck; lots of control points and such wouldn't go away, as well), but I'm alot farther along than I ever would have expected to be in less than 3 days, and I've proven to my satisfaction that ViaCAD was the right choice. Good times.
File Attachment(s):
guitar neck exercise4.vc3 (109kb) downloaded 6 time(s).

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ttrw  
#6 Posted : Saturday, June 27, 2009 3:23:15 AM(UTC)
ttrw

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Originally Posted by: unique Go to Quoted Post
Try to avoid duplicate lines too?


I too had a go trying to redraw this (after watching Steve), but unfortunately there were other more pressing things I had to deal with.

Duplicate lines? Yes I found a tonne of them! I was wondering Tim, if there is anyway of stopping this, so a new line for new geometry is only created if it is entirely necessary. For eg, if you create a polygon, then extrude it one way, then using the same entities to create the extrusion, just pick those same lines to add to further sketches, for a new feature. The software automatically adding additional lines where needed. This would save one heck of a lot of guess work! Even a 'lock the line' feature could be quite useful imo, disallowing one to pick the wrong entity?

BTW, I did start to model a lapsteel guitar in VC. I'll post it once it's finished.
ttrw  
#7 Posted : Saturday, June 27, 2009 3:32:28 AM(UTC)
ttrw

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Originally Posted by: Tim Olson Go to Quoted Post
Here is a quicktime movie showing a possible solution in ViaCAD 2D/3D.

Tim


Hehe- I'm talking utter nonsense again (previous post) :o But you know what, you make this look so easy, because you wrote the software, and know it inside out (no pun intended). But you know what, I find VC really hard to use/ learn, purely because of the complexity of it. I downloaded VC 2 or 3 years ago, and I still find it hard to use.

Thanks for the movie screenshot. It was very educational.
alvarado1357  
#8 Posted : Saturday, June 27, 2009 10:05:03 PM(UTC)
alvarado1357

Rank: Junior Member

Joined: 6/26/2009(UTC)
Posts: 4

Gotta say, i'd be totally lost without the help I received on the forums from Tim and Unique. I could not get past that neck to heel transition, and was clueless about how to do it. I worked on it for a couple hours, reading the manual, trying different commands, etc. In fact, that's how I found the forums, while doing some research on the net.

On the other hand, I started working on modeling a guitar within minutes of downloading the program; any reasonable person would have started off working with simple objects in 2d, then moving to 3d, etc. Had I done that, I likely would have learned about object integrity and the need to eliminate extra lines on my own.

I'm about to get back to work on another neck exercise, and sort out the back of the headstock; once that's done, I'll work on modeling parts to scale. By the way, I've also recommended VC to some of the folks on another forum, CNCZone, where Rhino and SW and VCarve are the programs of choice for luthiery. Their view is that a program must be able to model the carved top of a Les Paul to be of any use. Since I'm not going to be building any carved top guitars, it's the neck area that I'm most concerned with, and VC has that covered. Seems to me it could handle carved tops, as well, but I'll leave that to someone else...
Tim Olson  
#9 Posted : Sunday, June 28, 2009 11:35:28 AM(UTC)
Tim Olson

Rank: Senior Member

Joined: 2/2/2007(UTC)
Posts: 5,447
United States

Was thanked: 499 time(s) in 353 post(s)
Great, thanks for the reference in the cnc forum!

Here is an example Fender guitar modeled with our Shark product.

http://www.csi-concepts.com/Dem...der_studio_pr_gilles.jpg

http://www.csi-concepts.com/Demo/images/guitar.png



Tim
Tim Olson
IMSI Design/Encore
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