First and foremost, I sincerely apologize if this question has been asked before. I performed a reasonably lengthy search to no avail before posting…
Anyway, I am currently working with a file which is composed of a mesh created from a pdf (no clue how this was done; I recieved it from an associate). I am in the process of using this 2D mesh to create objects for a 3D cockpit. While all other functions seem to work as they should, for some reason the Bevel function will not create a bevel as it does with any other file I try it in. What happens is I select the vert/edge I want to bevel, use the W–>bevel command, the vertex/edge is duplicated, but does not move in response to the mouse. That being said, the bevel ratio (?) number in the bottom left does indeed move, and a new vert/edge is created, but they do not split as they should. I have checked the orientation and center location of the object, and I have tried it in various transform modes (active object center, all object center, cursor location etc.) to no avail. This tiny little issue is holding back a rather large project, so any help y’all may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated. See below name for specs.
Thanks in advance,
-Nick
Specs:
Blender v2.48
MBP Core Duo
OS X Leopard 10.5.6
My first thought is that the faces might not be connected. Depending on how they were generated/imported, objects are sometimes just a group of disconnected faces that don’t actually share edges with each other… their edges just overlap, looking like they’re connected.
It’s pretty easy to test for this: select a single face and move it. If it comes off by itself and doesn’t drag the edges of the faces around it, you’ve discovered the problem.
If that’s what happened, it can be fixed quite easily as well. In Edit mode, select all (A key), then Remove Doubles (W, 6; or Space->Edit->Vertices->Remove Doubles). That should rejoin all of the disconnected faces.
If that’s not what’s causing the problem, perhaps you could post a blend file? I suspect this might be sensitive/private information you’re working with, so you could remove everything but a few faces and save a new file, if need be.
Thanks, but I think the problem is a bit more advanced than that. I have uploaded a sample taken from the file. I’d be willing to bet its something obvious…Thanks again.
First, if I could make a small recommendation… I would personally scale the object up before trying to do any work on it. If it needs to be a particular size in order to connect with other components, either make sure you scale all objects by the same factor or scale this back down when you’re done working on it. At the current size though, it’s more cumbersome to work with than necessary (IMO), and unless you adjust the near clip plane, it’s hard as heck to get a decent look at.
…and hey, look at that. That also just happens to be the source of your problem. It’s too darn small. With bevel, there seems to be an odd interaction between the object and global coordinates, and it apparently fails on very small edges. To fix, scale your object up (I’d recommend a factor of around 20, actually), and apply the scale (CTRL-A). After that, bevel seems to work just fine.
I’ll just mention - Add a default cube and compare the scale of the objects.
Also, you may want to try the “bevel center” script from the ‘Mesh’ menu and compare the results.
Finally, you have your “remove doubles” limit set to 1.00; so if you were to perform a “remove doubles”, you would be left with one vertex. so reduce that to around 0.001 or perhaps slightly higher as required.
You can press [n] in the 3DWindow to check your object scale (currently it’s 0.00 - not good). so be sure to do the [Ctrl] + [a] as Spectre-7 mentioned.
D’oh…I didn’t even think of scale. For this particular file, scale isn’t an issue as the converted PDF was a scale diagram of the components. There’s an entire cockpit waiting for these goodies, and its just a matter of scaling them relative to the rest of the cockpit. Anyway, major thanks for the help guys!
-Nick
