Thanks and 'Morphing' question

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Clive
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Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by Clive » Wed Jun 27, 2018 9:40 am

Hi Andrew,

Firstly a big thank you for the extra new options for the dimension tools, really very useful.

Please could you explain and clarify what the morphing tool is actually for, it looks very creative I must say.

Many thanks

Clive
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andrew
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by andrew » Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:09 am

Morphing was mainly implemented for a project I was working on, but it might be useful for other, completely different use cases as well.

Often it's an alternative to the offset tool, when the space between two different closed shapes has to be filled with other closed shapes.

Let's say, we want to create a boat hull by gluing several layers or wood cutouts on top of each other. We start by creating the shape of the top layer for the boat hull:
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.22.png
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.22.png (24.68 KiB) Viewed 7504 times
We could now use the offset tool to create the other layers:
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.11.png
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.11.png (39.42 KiB) Viewed 7504 times
However, this is rather limiting, as the distance at all sides is always the same. Also the shape of the bottom layer cannot be defined and completely depends on the top layer.

That's where the morphing tool comes in. We can now draw the bottom layer to whatever shape we want that to be and then morph the top to the bottom layer:
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.30.png
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.00.30.png (39.31 KiB) Viewed 7504 times
We can play with different bottom shapes to create a steeper back and a more pointed front, etc:
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.05.51.png
Screen Shot 2018-06-27 at 10.05.51.png (39.57 KiB) Viewed 7504 times

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Clive
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by Clive » Wed Jun 27, 2018 11:00 am

Thanks Andrew for the clarity, yes I can now see the potential usefulness, great addition to QCAD, it will be interesting to see what others may use this tool for.
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by Husky » Fri Jun 29, 2018 5:00 am

Uiuiuiui - that new tool will open again a lot of doors. Thank you!

Playing around with the morphing tool I found out that not only the direction of the polyline is important but also the start point.
Is there an easy rule of thumb how to control the outcome regarding the start point?
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by andrew » Fri Jun 29, 2018 7:58 am

Husky wrote:
Fri Jun 29, 2018 5:00 am
Playing around with the morphing tool I found out that not only the direction of the polyline is important but also the start point.
Is there an easy rule of thumb how to control the outcome regarding the start point?
Both start point and direction are discussed in this tutorial:
https://qcad.org/en/tutorial-morphing

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Husky
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by Husky » Sat Jun 30, 2018 9:18 am

Thanks Andrew.

My biggest mistake was to start playing around with the Morph tool to explore a few possibility's. It's a kind of addictive, isn't it?..... :lol: :lol: :lol:

Husky-2018.06.30-02.png
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by andrew » Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:01 am

Interesting applications! Thanks for sharing..

Interesting also to see those simple use cases I haven't really thought about.

This makes me think that morph should also support lines, arcs, circles, etc. keeping the entity type if possible (i.e. circle -> circle, line -> line, ellipse -> ellipse, etc.).

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Husky
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Re: Thanks and 'Morphing' question

Post by Husky » Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:35 pm

andrew wrote:
Sat Jun 30, 2018 10:01 am
This makes me think that morph should also support lines, arcs, circles, etc. keeping the entity type if possible (i.e. circle -> circle, line -> line, ellipse -> ellipse, etc.).
Good idea - that would help a lot to eliminate a lot of construction steps.

I played already with lines which are converted to polylines. Big time saver!


Husky-2018.06.30-01.png
Husky-2018.06.30-01.png (3.89 KiB) Viewed 7401 times

Same with circle, ellipse or even blocks. :wink:
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