AC3D Desk tutorial – part 2

by Chris Fleming

OK, the long sought after continuation to the desk tutorial is here. Joking aside this will be a short addition, if you followed along with the desk tutorial you should be able to keep up with this. OK Let's get started:

Starting the wheel

First select the line tool and make sure your in the front view, you need to draw a arc as always the grid is your friend and it doesn't matter what size grid your working with because we'll shrink it afterward. The arc does not need to be as round as possible just close enough will do.

Now go the surface menu and choose Spline what this does is smooth our line. Now switch to the top view and click on extrude make sure you have deselected 'Cap end' and 'flip new surface' but make sure remove original is selected. Extrude it 4-5 units, you can now go into vertex mode and edit the arc to your liking.

The Wheels

Now Draw a sphere in top view over the arc make sure you cover it, then scale down so the circle extends beyond the arc on 2-3 units on each side. Check your front view to make sure the arc extends over halve of the size of the sphere once you line the arc over the sphere(edit as necessary). Make sure that you have at least a 1-1.5 unit gap between the arc and the sphere while in front view, then select and hide the arc switch to top view. While in top view switch to vertex mode then select exactly half of the circle, then go into the surface menu and select Cut away object. This should give you 2 perfect half's of the circle, switch to object mode briefly and click one of the halves. Drag it 2-2.5 units apart being careful to keep it lined up with the other. Now select them both hold control and scale them down a bit with the middle handle about 2-3 units should do. After that go back to vertex mode and select the edge vertices of one Circle half (the

vertices were the cut was made), go to the Vertex menu and select create convex surface\object. This should seal your wheel where it was split, repeat on the other half. Now in object Mode drag over a one of the halves, go to the object menu and choose merge then repeat on the second half.

Finishing touches

OK the hard parts done, if you see something you want better "make it so". After that Switch to top view and draw a cylinder about 2-3 units. Use side and front views to size it and position it on the left side of the arc(left in front view). In case you forgot we hid it earlier, position the cylinder down into the arc centered but on the left side. Make sure cylinder is about 1/4 past the arc it should be into the top of the wheel. Select and hide both wheels, go to the tools menu and choose Boolean operation. Select the cylinder then click the top set button, select the arc then click the set button below the top one. Make sure you have checked both delete boxes to the side of the select buttons, and that you have selected Union option then click OK. OK your done if you want to see how it looks on your desk, import the desk then scale the wheel to fit your preference.

After Thoughts

I got to thinking that the top of the wheel could have been done better one way would have been to draw a box and divide it about 4 times then move the vertices in a arc and subdivide it once. It gives it a better feel and look. Also if you ran into problems along the way the key points were selecting half of the circle, you must select half exactly. Boolean operation make sure you select one object at a time, that delete is selected and that you selected union. Any other questions or comments feel free to PM me. Here's a pic of the base using a box:

Points to note about this tutorial

This tutorial introduced a lot of things that didn't need to be introduced to make a wheel. I purposely did this to hopefully spark some excitement and experimentation on your part. The best way to learn a new function is to read thru the manual then continually play with the function. Also if you have any questions their are regular Good guys who drop by the forum who can help you out just remember to give back when your the expert modeler. :) A good thing is I will cover these in further detail in the future.