MaxSurf does not always show real profile

[Grant Nelson]

Hi, I use Maxsurf A. with Rhino. Making a bow in Maxsurf is a pain, or at least requires some extra effort, and complicates fairing as you change the shape of your hull. Thus, I split the bow, export it to Rhino, mirror the hull, and use the Blend command to make a real nice rounded bow. Then I delete the new Join it all, split it all along the mid-plane and delete half, so I have half a boat again, and export to MaxSurf. ALAS, the half bow becomes a whole half round bow again, with the other half in negative transverse space. In principle no problem, until I discovered that MaxSurf only shows Edges of Surfaces. What this means is that when you, as usual, turn on edges to see the profile of your boat (and export to CAD) you do NOT see the real bow profile, but only the foward most edges, which happen to be back where the half round bow joins with the forward edge of the hull. Thus, assuming I have not missed some function or way around this, this means I can not use MaxSurf to generate an accurate CAD profile drawing onto which I can draw my interior, etc.

Does anyone know more than I and can tell me how to a)either really cut half the bow in half (and not just hide the other half which Rhino seems to do - I checked and the control points are still there!) in either Rhino or MaxSurf (I tried triming the half away in MaxSurf but it refuses to trim for some reason) or b) turn on some funtion that shows the real profile of of an object, even if the othermost extents are not edges?

I can email a set of file that demonstrate the process and problem.

Cheers,
Grant

[aquabat]

Grant

I think I can help.

Splitting the bow profile in Rhino takes away half the surface but not the underlying network geometry. After splitting the bow go to Surface-surface Edit tools and select shrink trimmed surface.
This command should modify the network of control points so that they are for the split surface therefore removing any geometry for the other half.
Then when exported to Maxsurf it should only have the net for the half profile and should give you a profile curve in the profile window.
I havnt had the chance to test this so give it a try.

[bhnautika]

Grant if you want a quick look at your profile using the method you are using, just create a buttock line 10mm out from centre.

[Grant Nelson]

Aquabat, you are a genius, that works perfectly. Well, except that the Hull in MaxSurf has to have the same number of rows to be able to Join them and that is not always the case... but that is another problem..

bhnautika: yes, that does work, even if you put it at the centerline - which is more accurate. But I think that is a bit of twisting buttocks for the wrong thing. Also when you export to Acad, you have to turn that buttock into the outline (and that term outline is generated by MaxSurf in the export - and that is my other point: its not the ouline...)

Cheers,
Grant