I am trying to find a strategy to adding grip textures to tools and such. What is the best method to adding knurling? With F360 and SW, you could come back and change the dimensions of your “knurls” but I think without the pattern tool or a sketch its based on, it would be impossible to changing the knurl pattern. Anyone have a tip for this? An example on this pistol grip of what I want to do for my knife handle.
I’ve done it but only to round parts like you would knurl in a lathe. It was very tedious.
I drew tiny triangles down a shaft perpendicular to the surface then revolved them.
Then drew the same size triangles in an array around the diameter, extruded them along the OD and subtracted them from the revolved triangles.
The pattern was finely detailed, looked good, but again it was very tedious.
If I was going to knurl a part on the lathe I would just indicate on a drawing where and what knurling to perform. However if I was going to attempt to print the part I’d have to model it.
Thats been my issue, I can only find steps to do it on round objects. Looking to be able to on non circular objects.
This is the only thing I can think of. Getting the beveled edges on the knurling will be difficult.
This is exactly where I think some kind of macro capability would be extremely useful to simplify tedious tasks.
Even something as simple as the option to Repeat Last Command with the same parameters would save a lot of time — even better if you could specify n number of repeats. An array of identical objects spaced evenly (on the same plane) could be created quickly and easily by repeating the move/copy command with the same selection set, direction, and distance. As long as the undo command is available, it would be hard to mess things up too badly.
Perhaps slightly more difficult to implement, but vastly more powerful would be the capability to repeat the last sequence of two or three commands if desired. For the knurling example above, it would be useful to ( Project one column of pattern, Rotate X degrees around specified axis ) and repeat that sequence as needed.
There would still be some cleanup required (e.g. at curved edges or screw holes) but it should be faster and far less tedious overall.
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Agreed, but I suspect that exact functionality would be far more difficult to implement — especially if the pattern is not uniform as you move around the axis of rotation. Obviously, it could be done, but I’m willing to cut Shapr3D a little slack because this is a much younger product with a much smaller development staff than the established CAD companies.
On the other hand, I made my suggestion because I’m fairly certain that it could be implemented quickly and relatively easily. After all, Shapr3D already knows everything necessary to perform the current command — it just needs to “do it again”. A simple “Repeat last command” should be almost trivial to implement by simply replacing the new “starting” coordinates with the previous “ending” coordinates.
Asking for a user specified number of repeats should also be straightforward, as well as keeping track of the parameters of the most recent two or three commands. They are already keeping track of the “Undo” history. In fact, they have to be doing something very similar to this with the “Undo/Redo” commands. They could even use the “Redo” button to initiate the “Repeat” last command since it is normally only active after an “undo”, and is the logical place to step forwards and backwards through a series of commands. A short press could move forward one step per press and a long press could prompt you for a specific number.
Only that the annual subscription of Shapr3D is more expensive than the annual subscription of an established, perfected CAD like Fusion 360!
For hobbyists, I can get Solidworks at a fraction of the cost now. Just ordered a 3D mouse to use with my laptop and I think this will be my way forward for the time being. I love the idea of what Shapr3d is doing and I hope it excels but its not there yet.
Solidworks has a much, much larger user base, so they can afford to offer a cheaper license in hope of getting the hobbyists “hooked” and upgrading their license.
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