tesselation (kind of)

[oscarl48]

Brad, I think we are hitting the limits of 2.5 geometry in attempting to force it on 3d objects. May be doable with the rotary add-on but I don't have it and have no plans for it.

Different topic. I just had one of those dumb EUREKA moments (dumb on my part). I don't need to understand the mathematics or theories behind tessellation of shapes as long as I know the steps to create patterns that tessellate. So that was my eureka moment. Okay pretty small moment but it did feel like a light bulb came on. Surprisingly occurred as I was firing my 45 at the range. A little bizarre in my opinion since both events have absolutely nothing to do with each other. hmmmmm. subconsciously thinking about gun grips maybe.

Here's a quick pattern I did playing with the concept. Again surprisingly simple when not worrying about math or theories. I am calling this abstract piece "A school".

Process: create shape in CorelDraw and save as svg format graphic. Import into Blender3d and create the complex surface geometry. Import into Designer using stl importer. Start playing with the layout and design of the piece.

Basic pattern enclosed for your own masterpiece creation. Pattern built from scratch and took about 10 minutes to make.

-Oscar

[oscarl48]

Listening to loud techno after watching Lawrence Welk. My wife is confused...but I digress. Here is a fun little tessellated shape with Suzanne superimposed. Suzanne is a Blender 3d primitive so is available at a keystroke. No work required.

No clue how it will carve but super fun and super quick to make.

[Rocketman]

Different topic. I just had one of those dumb EUREKA moments (dumb on my part). I don't need to understand the mathematics or theories behind tessellation of shapes as long as I know the steps to create patterns that tessellate. So that was my eureka moment. Okay pretty small moment but it did feel like a light bulb came on.

-Oscar

I agree we don't need or want to do all the math behind tesselations but knowing the roots helps break down the barriers. One of my light bulb moments was when I realized that the entire STL format is based on tesselations. Any flat 2d object can be tessellated into a single plane. Once that's done it's not too big of a jump to make it 3D.

As an example imagine a square drawn on a piece of paper. That square is just 4 points with 4 lines in between them. Draw another diagonal line between two of the corners. You have now tessellated the square by breaking it into two triangles. Just like an STL file; your "tessellated" square works like other true vector formats. It can be enlarged without loss because an enlarged version will still contain 4 points for the corners connected by the original amount of vectors. Unlike pixel based formats, an STL does not have to grow in file size. To increase resolution we simply divide each line in our drawn square in half and add a vector point at the point of division. An STL file works very much the same way and increased division does make file sizes grow exponentially. And that's STL files in a nutshell.

The nice thing about tesselation creation is it saves a lot of work once you realize a way to let the software do the repetition for you. You seem to have decovered a system that works well for you. I only wish more people would understand how powerful of a tool it is. Most any of the signs being made could be dressed up with texture applied to the individual letters, to the background of the sign or by using contrasting textures; both within the same sign.

The basic designer is so limited when it comes to using "factory" textures. I have not found a way to add my own yet so I'm one that also relies on creating my own in the form of patterns to get around the software limits. While I have Corel Draw, it's not free and other Carvewright users may feel left out because of this. Many of them don't have the STL importer. I chose the STL importer as the most cost effective way of expanding the basic free version of Designer. Almost all other add on software for the carvewright can be simulated with free or low cost software once you have a way to get 3D files in and out of the Carvewright software. It would be nice to do more within the Carvewright software but I cannot justify the cost of the limited expansion packs being offered. I'm interested as to what others feel is the one Carvewright software add on they would choose above all others and why? That question alone would be worthy of it's own heading.

[oscarl48]

Another quick pattern. If anyone tries any of these please post how they turn out.

[Rocketman]

I'm curious as to your methods. I'm on an IPad today so I don't have the luxury of downloading and playing with your pattern. How are you doing the multiples? With just a single copy of your creations the only way I can think of tesselating them is by manually pasting them in a pattern and then repeating the process to evenly expand the design. Doing this outside of designer seems easier unless there's a nesting feature I'm not aware of? Doing it within Designer does let you play with the tools such as feather and draft and height and also the merge options to elaberate on the pattern.

I've been saving some things to "Dropbox" and then I play with them later on my desk computer where I can retreave them with the "Dropbox" also installed on that machine. P.S. Wouldn't it be nice to have Bluetooth or wifi on the Carvewright for file transfers?

[oscarl48]

Brad, I am doing it manually. I've been using either in Blender or Designer to do it. That way I can control where the objects are located. If it was going to be super intricate though I would probably do it in CorelDraw where I have more control. You can be pretty sloppy in Blender and Designer and still get a good mpc. In Corel by snapping to object you can align perfectly.

[Rocketman]

Your experiments reminded me, years ago I played with font generator software. You could create an individual font letter by letter editing pixel by pixel. It looked kind of like the old video game 8 bit characters one would create on a Commodore 64 computer. Instead of creating normal fonts, I explored the "wing dings" end of the font spectrum. I created some cool custom logos and saved them as a personal font. Once loaded into any program that allows text the fun began. I could then placed them in patterns by changing text size from big to small and vice versa. Each line would allow me to make the pattern more complicated as I continued to weave the custom characters in interesting patterns. And the nice thing was that once the custom fonts were created all I had to do was type to create my designs. I ended up printing some custom T-shirts with cool borders and weaving designs all made with a handful of simple fonts. I made some of the patterns upside down and also mirrored them. Once printed it looked nothing like the individual keystrokes I used to create it. It was kind of like printing pictures with an old dot matrix printer except with stylized dots. Your designs would work well as custom fonts. By making a custom color palette my experiments would work well with the Carvewright and your tessellations. You could then not only vary size by changing text size but you could also vary cutting depth by varying colors of the fonts while typing patterns. I wish I had the time to explore this as I'm sure it would be interesting.

[oscarl48]

I used to make fonts a long time ago as well using CorelDraw. Many versions ago it had a native capability to build fonts. The company gave up on the capability a long time ago.

I am calling this one a butterfly garden.

For anyone that has CorelDraw I learned this technique with the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Om6WMi4YTo

After watching this video I had my aha moment on how simple it is to make these shapes if you don't worry about math.

[Rocketman]

Thanks for the link, I had never seen that one before. So many possibilities and only a fraction of the time needed to explore all of them. Keep up the good work.

I've been busy making fixtures and jigs out of aluminum and nylon to hold on and machine on a pepper mill I had started with the Carvewright. Strange wooden objects don't lend themselves well to being clamped without marring. I'm starting to understand why liquid guitars designed his flute in two halves. It's a lot of trouble to get a hole all the way through a long piece of wood from center to center without the drill walking.

Brad

[oscarl48]

Brad, that has been my primary issue with the wood book designs. Especially since I was trying to use a 12 in drill bit. It kept walking on me. I finally gave up on trying to drill the holes and went with using the table saw to cut a channel and then plugging the end portion afterward to create the hole for the dowel pin.

Good luck on the pepper mill.

Oscar