Modeling Diving Knife Tutorial

STEP 2 – BLADE

Ok, now we got our blueprints set up the way we want, and now we’re gonna speed things up a bit. Basically all you need to do is to trace the outlines of the blade. Use Line (or PolyLine) and Ortho for straight lines, use Curve for curves, and Match to match the curves to other lines or curves to get smooth transition between them. Usually Tangency is enough option in Match command. For the little circular blades on top of the blade use two circles with various radii. And with Trim just trim the lines you don’t need. 😉 It was easy to say it, but lets get on it and make it. And for your convenience you can put the PictureFrame into another layer and lock it. So when you move or select or perform any other action you don’t mess with the blueprints.

So, as you can see, in the picture above, there are just simple lines and curves. For the lines, make sure you use Ortho so they are straight, either vertically or horizontally. So, naturally next step would be to Trim some lines. You can hide the middle line, we don’t need it anymore. Ok, now we have some lines and some curves. To you they might seem to be ok, because I did make them pretty accurate. But not 100% accurate. we need our curves to be tangent to our lines. We can adjust that with Match command. Now, the important thing is to note that once you are in the Match command it asks you first for the line or curve that will be edited to match the Match settings (Position, Tangent or Curvature) and then for the curve that you will NOT change with Match command. Of course there is one option in Match command that lets you change both curves (Average Curves) but we’ll get to that when creating the handle.

Repeat this for other two.After matching all the curves to the lines, we will need to Split two lines:

Now, create a Point on the Mid point of the little line you created by splitting the top straight line. Once you create the line, move it up by units. This Point will be the center of Circle.

Ok, now create a Circle with 10 units as radius and as center use the point.

Now, guess what, we are going to Trim that circle with the line and Mirror it using the line we recently hid to make the copy on the bottom side as well.

Before we go and create our first surface, we need to join the curves. Select all the lines and curves like on the image above, and Join them. Next thing we need to do just before creating surfaces is move the lines we just joined. From the blueprints we can see that the thickness of the blade is 5 units. Since we started everything from the origin (0,0) we already have set up mirror plane. We can just make one half, and then Mirror it to the other side as well.

Using Line command create one Line like on the image below, and using Copy command copy it 3 more times. Using End OSnap option will do the trick.

Create one more Line:

Do the same for bottom with Mirror or create a Line again. Now, using PointsOn turn on the control points of the left horizontal curve. And move the last control point to the end of the inner tip of the flat closed set of lines and curves:

Now, from top viewport (it would be smart to disable OSnap for the moment) adjust other control points so the curve gets the smooth arched direction:

After you adjust the remaining control points, you can enable your OSnap now, and using PointsOff command hide the control points. Now, go ahead and create your first surface. Using PlanarSrf command create a surface out of closed set of curves:

Using Explode command explode the closed curve set you just used to create this planar surface. And, then using Join command join these curves only:

I’ve created this line with Line (or PolyLine) command starting from the top corner and moved it down to be perpendicular on the edge of surface (or curve). Use Perp in OSnap.

Ok, now with Sweep2 command we will use upper and lower sets of curves as rails (yellow), and three section curves as sections (red):

Now, lets set some curves for the lower part of the blade. First we need to Join 4 curves into 2 curves:

Again, using Sweep2 command, create a surface:

Now, using PlanarSrf we will fill in the two gaps we have left. Then we will extrude this set of two lines and one curve with ExtrudeCrv command.

For the extrusion height you can type in 2.5 or just use any of the lines as reference points:

Do the same for the other side, or just Mirror it. Now, using SrfPt command fill the side of the blade:

Ok, now Join every surface. Then Mirror that polysurface and Join those two halves. Now, we have our blade form on which we will proceed with modeling details.

Using Line command, create a line on top of the blade edge.

But try not to snap to the left end, but rather finish the line a bit closer to the corner:

Next thing we’ll do is Divide the line into 7 parts. The command Divide isn’t actually splitting the line into 7 separate parts, but it places Points on the line instead.

So, using the second point looking from the left we will Split this Line:

Ok, now we need our blueprints again. You can turn on the layer you put your PictureFrame in on. Using Arc command, make sure you click on the StartPoint option in the command line, and then click on two points:

Now, like on the picture above, click on the Radius in the command line, and input number 6 as radius. After that click on the viewport (Front) to set the direction of this arc.

Make another Arc with 8 units as radius, and using Copy command copy those two arcs 6 more times:

Now, using the bigger ones (stay in this viewport – just set it to Ghosted by right clicking the Front caption) Trim the blade surface:

Now, using Loft command make a surface between two edges and one smaller arc:

Repeat this step for all other six arcs, or just Copy this surface six more times:

Next, just Join all surfaces. And for the last thing in this step we will use the same method on the bottom blade. So, first using blueprints, trace the outlines with InterpCrv command. Adjust the curves with PointsOn command if needed.

Before we start trimming the surface, we need to trim our smaller curve with the surface.

Now, using bigger curve we will trim the surface:

Now, adjust the smaller curve’s ends. With PointsOn command we will show the control points and move each end to the end of the surface:

After that we need to hide the control points with PointsOff command. Now, again, with Loft command make a surface: (it might be necessary to do one side at the time and then Join both)