Need to Draw a Flat Oval???

handyman4545

Looking for a quick way to draw an oval with flat sides.

Picture a box with half a sphere on top and the other half on the bottom.

OR

A cylinder with two flat sides and a rounded top and bottom.

handyman4545

I'm using the stretch right now but it loses all the cross edges in the stretched area and I have to "connect" each one to get them back.
Is there another tool that will stretch the sides of the cylinder without losing the cross edges?

JonnyRay

Am I picturing this right? Kind of like the shape of a medicine capsule? Or does the center section need to retain the square cross-section?

 

Chohole

Kinda like this?   

Ascania

It's a bit easier to do in Hexagon with 3D objects than with just lines, so lets go that path.

Create a Cylinder, 20 Pts/sec, 2 Sections, without caps.

Select two opposite edges where you want the flat sides to be.

Click Dissociate in the Vertex modeling tab.

Select the faces of one half of the cylinder and move it away a stretch.

Select the edges facing each other on the two halves and click Bridge in the Vertex modeling tab.

You can now extract the bottom or top edge loop to get the desired shape as a line or keep on working with the extended cylinder directly. Whatever strikes your fancy.

 

handyman4545

What I'm trying to achieve is this with two straight side but without the significant loss of the pts as shown below.

The first 11 sections I used the edges tool to adjust them to a flat position but that took a significant amount of time.
After doing that I selected faces on the lower half of the primitive and dragged it down. Results were a linear, smooth field I desire but ZERO pts.

Now I have to manually add via "connect" numerous pts to get them back.

Is there a way to compress the opposite sides of the cylinder (or sphere) starting from the most extreme verticy and gradually picking up each sucessor verticy as you compress it, flattening the sides (or top as the case may be) WITHOUT distorting the ends?
The box on the universal arrows compresses the side without flatening them and also the top & bottom as it goes.

Ascania

Select faces, then scale down.

handyman4545

Asc...
Thank you for making the effort. Your suggestions though not quite what I was looking for actually helped me in another directon I was pondering.

What I have achieved thus far is as shown.

I first selected the two, opposing "edges" to be located in the center of my "flat sides" and using the universal, arrow tool, "box", drew them both together simultaneously to the point I wanted the ultimate width of the flats to be.
Then I marked the location of those edges as shown in the "properties" pane, "Size" box (see illust #1)
Then I selected the next series of two each edges moving outward from the original edge and using loop, (see illust #2) selected the next four edges
Then I entered the new size from the previous step and pressed enter
The result (see illust #3) is exactly what I was looking for.

I'll cap the two ends now then using the "Fast Extrude" tool (cntrl+R Mouse), red box, enter a series of concentric ovals on the flat ends and by extracting each new oval as I create it, achieve the rounded "pill" ends.

Shame there's no simpler way but it works.

handyman4545

Addendum

I've learned by experience now that if you don't cap the ends before you start the process of narrowing the sides, there's a real good chance that you won't be able to cap the ends later. Especially if you vary the linear aspect of the end edges or hole the primitive.

This means you have to "bridge" the ends to close them.
That eliminates your ability to step up or down the ends to achieve the rounded pill cap affect.

JonnyRay

Something like this then?

1. I started with a cube, divided into 16 segments per side.
2. Selected the whole object and scaled it to squash on the X axis and stretch on the Y
3. I turned on symmetry on the Y axis
4. I selected the faces on the top and slowly raised them bit by by (0.2 cm, 0.1 cm, then 0.05 cm) until the top looked rounded

handyman4545

J:
That's another good way to do it too so long as the number of pts being pulled out is low.

Increase that number to 20 or 50 or more and it becomes tedious.

Wish there was a way to "solidify" the object, then push another "solid" object against it from both sides simultaneously.
Or
Give the Universal mouse tool another key sequence in combination with the "squeeze" function it now has, to pull the side in linearly rather than as they do now.

Varsel

This is how I would Do it.

Start low poly - and then use smothing to increase polycount.

 

Click picture for larger...

DzFire

Easier to use a cube, scale the ends to a rectangle and apply a chamfer.

handyman4545

Perhaps but chamfer won't work as soon as you distort the polys or hole the primitive.

ShawnDriscoll

Can you post a photo of the exact object you are trying to model?

DzFire

handyman4545 said:

Perhaps but chamfer won't work as soon as you distort the polys or hole the primitive.

If that happens, you can do a few quick "Extract fillet"s

handyman4545

These engins are one long eztraction from nose to pail.

Each change in width or height was done as the work moved backwards.
I actually had to start with a 70 pt sylinder with only 3 sects to create this and added sects as I Went down the length.

The trouble I had was in getting the oval with the straight sides that that was slightly narrower at the top than the bottom.
Then getting the rounded edges on the top and bottom of the forward opening.
All my rounded edges had to me manually sectioned by adding additional tesselation pts. in only the places where I wanted the fchamfer, without altering the over all aspect of the rest of the housing.

Things like the center sylinder, linear in shape with no changes in diameter were easy but the two ends were a manual, pain due to the need for intricate manipulation.

Again, a new "ability" (the straight compress) added to an existing tool (the universal manipulator) would have made this faster.