Creating a curved indent

Hi everyone. New to the boards and a trying my hand at using Blender to design some items for 3D printing and am still pretty green around the ears.

I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction in order to achieve an effect I want. I have a feeling it is going to be far more complicated than I am hoping though :stuck_out_tongue:

So below is my ham-fisted attempt at what I wanted want to create a curved indent that goes along a curved surface and multiple changes of axis orientation. What I attempted was to create a bunch of loop cuts to divide the surface into smaller chunks and I then selected the ones that formed the rough path I wanted. This was after creating the 3D structure.


As you can see, the results are far from what I wanted, but close enough to give people the idea :wink:

My next idea is to create a curve on a plane mesh, then extrude the plane to create the final structure, but Iā€™m not sure thatā€™s going to work, or how to go about it.

Would be greatful for any advice on this one.

Iā€™m still quite new to this myself but a couple of options ; Use the knife tool to cut the path you want, bevel to get the width you want, then extrude inwards.
2. New mesh/plane, scale it to the width you want for the cut out , shrink-wrap modifier targeting your original mesh , this should stick it to the surface, extrude it to make the path you want, sub divide if needed. Add solidify modifier to the thickness/depth you want. Boolean tool to cut it out from your original mesh.

Hope this helps.
Andy

Nobody has bothered to help you yet, so Iā€™ll try.

I donā€™t know what the plane is for that this groove is on, or what the plane should look like with the groove in it, but from what you explain, you might try using a curve to create the grooveā€™s shape, and then convert the curve into a mesh and extrude its mid-point edge (on the same axis as the plane would be on) into the plane you were trying to create the groove in. Kind of a reverse way of doing it, but it will definitely work.

To use a curve to make the groove, youā€™ll need to fiddle with its properties. I donā€™t have Blender in front of me to refer to, but you need to give the curve depth and probably increase the resolution a little, plus make sure itā€™s set to ā€œhalfā€ on one of the menu options (should already be set). You will end up with a curve that looks like a groove.

Once youā€™ve shaped your curve the way you want it, you can convert it to a mesh via the 3D viewport Object menu > Convert To. From there you can extrude the plane from its edges.