Mis-mesh

[Anonymous]

I constructed an organic form(a solid balcony) that clings to an acute angle corner of a two-story wall by drawing the profiles of the form every three inches using the mesh tool. Each 'slice' was drawn as a separate mesh. How can these be combined into a single mesh so it will render as a solid in the 3D window?

[Anonymous]

Could you post an image of what you have so far ?
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Thank you for replying. I'll try to 'post' a file of this(no experience with this process). I have tried to 'choose' the file and submit twice now and the reply is that the extensions .pne and .bpe are not allowed. This may have something to do with owning the student version of AC 9.
In plan view, imagine an 'L' with a 76 degree inside angle. This would be the corner of the building. The outside of the L has a wraparound balcony that has a freeform edge. In elevation, it appears as a wall with a truncated molten form at railing height and tapers to nothing at the bottom. The floor plan view of the mesh looks very similar to a topographic map, and with assigned height values, is a deep ravine abutting straight walls. In the 3D window, the form appears as multiple planes of uniformly spaced contours , but not solid as desired, since each plane was entered as a separate mesh.

[Anonymous]

Can't quite make out from your signature whether your on a Mac or Windows platform. If on Win to capture a screen shot just hit Print Scrn button on keyboard at appropriate time, paste it to photoshop, paintshop, whatever, crop the image if necessary and save as jpg image. Then you can add attachment to forum (must be under 256k size)

HTH

[Stress Co_]

s2art wrote:
Can't quite make out from your signature whether your on a Mac or Windows platform. If on Win to capture a screen shot just hit Print Scrn button on keyboard at appropriate time, paste it to photoshop, paintshop, whatever, crop the image if necessary and save as jpg image. Then you can add attachment to forum (must be under 256k size)

HTH

If your on a Mac...... it's Apple key (command)+Shift+4 This will give you a crosshair, drag the crosshair over what you want to capture and release. You'll hear a camera click. This creates a PDF screen shot to your desktop.
Follow s2art's direction (You may be able to attach the PDF w/o making it a jpg...i think?).

[Anonymous]

Thank you Stuart Rose. I'm Mac so I used Grab and Preview to convert to a .jpg. Here goes.

[Anonymous]

Here's the 3D window too.

[Anonymous]

You say in your first post " Each 'slice' was drawn as a separate mesh".
Do you mean that every contour shown in the balconyj jpg are not contours
but are the perimeters of separate meshes stacked on top of each other ?

If so, you can make one mesh with "contours" at 3" intervals vertically.
Use your bottom most mesh as your starting point.
Draw with the line tool or the polyline tool or spline tool each successive
contour and then with the mesh selected and the mesh tool selected
magic wand each line,polyline, or spline and a contour or "ridge" is
created in the mesh. After all contours are created, select each one
individually with the mesh tool selected and assign each one an elevation
or height, (with apply to all points selected).
In your case 3" for the first contour, 6" for the second contour
and so on.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes, your first statement is exactly what I was trying to convey. I was hoping to avoid any further data entry by using the magic wand's capabilities as the creation of each of the profiles was tedious requiring individual design and adjustment.
Is there a way to override the recognition of meshes, perhaps by copying the plan into a format that doesn't retain such properties and then reopening this new file and using the magic wand to create a single mesh? (Using the polyline or spline tool would in effect be redrawing the entire scheme which is something I am trying to avoid)
Waiting for a miracle!

[__archiben]

garytom wrote:
Waiting for a miracle!

starting from one side and for each mesh in turn:
1. explode your mesh(/slab?) (Tools>Explode)
(1a. get rid of the fill that will be created)
2. select each series of lines/arcs that make up one contour and 'unify' them (Tools>Unify) so that they become one polyline for each contour. remember that for each subsequent mesh you'll only need to 'unify' the one side of the mesh that represents the next contour)

then:
3. do the same for the perimeter of the entire thing - create a polyline that surrounds the entire mesh. you can reuse the two existing outside polylines (copy/paste) that you've already created as a part of that.
4. using the mesh tool: space click perimeter polyline being sure that it is the perimeter polyline and not one of the contour polylines
5. with mesh tool active and your newly created mesh selected space-click each contour polyline
6. click on each newly created mesh contour line, again with the mesh still selected, and use the pet palette to enter a height value for that line

7. miracle achieved in about ten minutes . . .

HTH
~/archiben