I tried to look this up but I don’t know what the name for this is.
Basically I have a mechanical 3D model and would like to place screws/bolts on it. I modeled a bolt and of course I can now place it manually, but it’s tedious and getting a consistent look seems impossible. I’m sure there is something I could use for this.
My model has angled edges and round parts. Is there maybe a modifier I could use to easily place screws on the surface? Maybe even keep the distance between them the same so it looks “artificial”?
From what I gather from the array modifier I could do this by using a curve then? Is this the right way? Make the curve fit the mesh, then use the array modifier with the curve to put the bolts along the curve? Or is there a more direct way of placing something along a mesh surface using an array modifier?
Edited:
Thanks, this looks pretty good. I’ll look into this as well.
Apologies for posting again. I’ve now watched a few tutorials on dupliverts and I still can’t figure out how to have it properly align to my object. What I learned is that I can make a circle with let’s say 6 vertices, then with dupliverts have a screw appear for every vertex. But I still have to align that circle to my mesh manually, which is very fiddly and I just can’t get it to look right since the metal pipe I’m trying to apply it to is slightly curved (the screws always poke out a bit more on one side and it looks sloppy).
With the array modifier I can also only make a circle of screws which I have to align manually. Is there another way, maybe creating it on the mesh itself? (With dupliverts it seems it always uses the whole mesh, so I can’t just select a loop cut and apply screws to every other vertex.)
say you had a cylinder with 32 verts, and you wanted 16 screws. duplicate an edge loop, separate it, then delete half the vertextes, or…
select an edge loop, shift S to snap cursor to selection, then add a circle with the desired number of verts.