spin dup tool + groups?

Support Modeling
1

hey guys, just starting learning blender today and I’m super excited with it.
I’m working on the water wheel for a sawmill which has 12 sections of 4 buckets each. I started with a single 4-bucket section and then used the spin dup tool to construct the whole wheel, but I’m wondering if there might be a more efficient way to do it? since all 48 buckets are the same, can I make a “bucket component” or something that blender can copy instead of drawing them all individually? or are groups used for something else.

piece that gets spun:
http://i35.tinypic.com/rr120z.jpg

completed wheel:
http://i38.tinypic.com/725egj.jpg

also, as you can see each bucket’s sides are separate while the real waterwheel has smooth metal sides. How would I go about merging (4 of them) into a single surface?

thanks for the help

update: these http://i37.tinypic.com/1q3042.png are the surfaces I have selected, is there any way at all to merge these?

2

Hi Spotty,

I think your answer lies in the Array and Mirror Modifiers.

Have a look at these wiki pages:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modifiers/Objects/Array
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Modifiers/Mesh/Mirror

Also have a look at the following blenderartists thread describing it’s
use, it is for a tyre but the concept is covered.
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=166642

Hope this helps?

Kindest Regards,

Pixeltwister

3

Hi,

Also if you want to merge those sections together try
removing the internal faces manually.Then using the
Remove Doubles button in the Mesh Tools panel in
Edit Mode.

Rgds,

P.

4

i think the key here is to make one angular section then apply the spin Dup tool
and remove doubles

so the work here is to make the first section and then it easy with spin tool!

or if you have the first section then the array can be used also

hope it helps

salutations