Particularly Picky Model!

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hey peeps! I’m modeling a (not-so) simple ammo magazine! I’ve now spent about 15 hours trying to get the top lines to work, and for the life of me I can’t figure it out. I’m not going for super high-poly/realism, but since the magazine itself will be “on display” I need the loading area. Can anyone help me figure out these horribly tricky angles!? It looks simple when I’m viewing it, and becomes ridiculously persnickity when I attempt to model it.

I’ve been modeling for a while now, but still novice, and not great with paths/bezier curves, as I’m thinking I might need.

Anyways, here’s the reference model:

stc=1

(Note the grooves in the side that leave those edges on the outside, but then the front is slightly tucked in and then bends out before curving back in for the top edges)

And then this is what I’ve got so far (which, btw, is about the 5th model. Every other one failed in its own unique way lol! This one, when I thought I figured it out by doing 2 loop cuts on top, then doing a loop cut on each side of those-to give me the proper width for the outside edges, if I did 4 segments at once the width wasn’t proper-then, when I did the side loop cuts and extruded in for the grooves along the side, all kinds of face icons popped up in the middle of my edges and nothing is still coming together on top:
stc=1

I haven’t gotten around to doing more to it (I just deleted the last one, once it got too ridiculously out of shape), but either way, if I work the top first, it doesn’t work. I’ve tried going as simple as subdividing the top in 2 segments, deleting the middle face, then trying to work the front corners, and all kinds of stuff goes wrong there as well. Help!! XD

2

Unfortunately your reference image does not show up, so no advice on that angle-thing :frowning: (you may try bevel (CTRL + B). Select some edges, press CTRL+B, move your mouse and scroll a few steps to see what it does)

To get rid of the weird edge-faces select everything (in editmode of course), bring up the toolbar (T) and click remove doubles:
stc=1

You can change the behaviour of extruding/scaling/translating/rotating with this little icon:
stc=1
Try “individual origins” and “median point”. I think one of these will solve most of the trouble you encountered…

3

Menu Mesh -> Cleanup -> Degenerate Dissolve should get rid of these faces.

Speaking of which, if you open default file and in edit mode extrude face of cube, cancel extrusion pressing Esc and extrude again - you end up with such faces.

Esc cancels just the movement of newly created stuff (vertice, edge, face); what’s created does not get deleted automatically (except if you had Automerge option on, but that has it’s own quirks).
After pressing Esc you have to press Ctrl-z to Undo Extrusion. If you want to cancel it, that is: you might want to use grab to move extrusion somewhere else.