Vectric Customer

I wanted to build a lighthouse and I discovered some things along the way, just thought I would share them with everyone. Here is what I have learned:

We have been sold a bill of goods! The sweep tool is WAY more powerful than we have been led to believe.

Instead of just including a component here, I have only provided the vectors I used to create models you see in the images. It is just way too easy to build the models you see in the pictures and you owe it to yourself to build your own. Plus, if you have the vectors, you can alter them, understand them and make things yourself.

Here is the file that contains the vectors:
Here is the deal with that sweep tool. If you put little features in the vectors, like notches, those features wind up in the swept surface. If you use that little check box "Scale coss section with width" the rails get followed nicely. The other thing is, the rail can actually be the model. You notice, I do not have vectors that are the model, and then vectors that are the rails, they are the same.

The point of all that is, if you need to get nice consistent features, like mortar joints in a brick wall, the Sweep tool is just the ticket!

So, here is what I did:

The vectors, notice the little notches. You will also notice that there are a pair sweeps for the tower and the wall, if you look closely you will see the notches are staggered. That is so it looks like a brick wall. The rails themselves are not big long continuos lines

In the following image a pair of rails were selected and the bottom sweep and you can see the result, complete with mortar joints, note that the "Scale cross sections" box is checked, this is REAL important, or your horizonatal mortar joints will not show up : The next image shows the next pair of rails selected with the staggered sweep chosen: Ok, I am not going to bore you with each and every step building the tower. What I did NOT do was make each level a component. I just kept clicking pairs of rails, adding to the working model and at the end, I made the whole thing a component. The following image shows what it looks like, a tapered tower: The next image shows a wall built essentially the same way. Of course, once these things are components, you can squoosh them down (highly technical talk for flattening stuff), stretch them out, play with those sculpting tools to make them look ancient. Hang grape vines over them, or whatever floats your skiff. I created the original vectors in Corel X3, but that is just me, I am very familiar with it, having sort of grown up in Corel. The exact same thing can be done in Aspire.

Excellent work Ted, Thanks for sharing your technique.

Nice technique. I can use that with all kinds of carvings. Thank you.

Very impressive and a great explanation of the "how to".

This technique works good for some other things too. By altering the shape of the sweeps: This was incredibly simple. Ya gotta love Aspire!

TReischl wrote:This technique works good for some other things too. By altering the shape of the sweeps:

Step_7.jpg

This was incredibly simple. Ya gotta love Aspire!

Did you make two different sweeps for the basket weave or just alternate them?

I made two different sweeps just like is used for the bricks. It is the same thing, just a different contour.

Here is an image of the sweeps:

If you were wondering what you can do with this technique, besides building castles and such, I combined the basket weave with one of the clipart images (the double grape) supplied with Aspire to achieve the effect shown here. Admittedly, I am not much of an artist, so the scale, white space, proportion and all the rest is horrible, but you can see what can be done. I am not sure if the tutorial made it real clear how to do this sort of thing, but what I do is trace the image of the grapes in this case (the tutorials make it real clear how to do that), then I use that to punch a hole in working model of the basket weave BEFORE it I turn it into a component. After that, everything is easy. Just make sure you park the grapes and size them before you do the tracing and punching of the hole.

There is a lot to Aspire, so I was a bit overwhelmed and probably still am, but I am getting it. slowly but surely.

TReischl wrote:I made two different sweeps just like is used for the bricks. It is the same thing, just a different contour.

Here is an image of the sweeps:

Step_8.jpg

Thank you for the basket weave sweep. Looks like you mastered the sweep part of Aspire. Your background example looks great.

Ted,

I am very appreciative of time you took to put the tutorial up for all of us to learn from.

You, like a few others, have certainly mastered Aspire very quickly.

Thanks,
Larry

Hah! Far from having "mastered" it. You would not believe how I blunder around. I have all these preconceived notions of how it "should" work because I worked in CAD. Aspire is for relief carving, a very different animal. I am hoping that if I show how I figure something out, some of the other guys will do the same and help me shorten my learning curve.

I'm waiting every single day for Aspire arrive to really hand on for Xmas.
Tell me If I missed this somewhere that is "HOW TO" section should be created for Aspire (like VCP does).
What do you think?

Hello Hai, you have been very quiet lately.

From what I can see so far, a small book would be in order for Aspire. It is a very powerful tool. It is able to do both organic and mechanical design. These require slightly different thinking patterns but use the same tools.

What I am learning so far is what has been mentioned by a few of the others, organization is very important. If you are only doing a simple shape, organization is not important. But beyond that, layers and controlling the drawing are key to being successful.

On another level, if you want to use models created by 3rd parties, there seem to be more available now, JamesB seems to be rolling out more and more everyday. So you can use Aspire to assemble wonderful projects without really diving into the designing of models.

Aspire is one of those products that works on quite a few different levels.

I am sure you are going to enjoy working with it!

WOW - I never even thought of using it that way! Excellent writeup. I was just playing, trying to do a nice basket weave. This makes it much easier!

Ron

Ted.

You are amazing. Thanks for sharing.

Larry