Custom 3D Rope Border in Aspire
In this quick tip, we look at how to easily make custom 3D rope borders using the extrude and weave modeling tool. This only works in Vectric Aspire.
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Video Transcript:
Hello, everyone. In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to make a custom 3D rope border in only a few minutes. So to start this project, we're first going to need a custom 2D border. So you can either draw that using the create vector tools, or you can go to the clip art library. And if you go to 2D vectors, there's many different options in here you can choose from.
I'm going to come down here and choose panel number 54, so I'm going to double click on that to bring it in. And this panel is going to work nice because it has nice round edges and the rope border will flow on those smooth curves much better than it will with sharp corners. If you wanted to use something with sharp corners, you may have to use the fillet tool to create a radius corner before you turn it into a rope border.
So now that we have our 2D vector, we now need the 3D rope link to turn this into a 3D rope border. So we're going to find that in the border folder. And if we scroll down, you're going to find what's called the rope link. So this will be the link that you need to make the custom 3D border.
So we're going to double click on that to bring in to our job. And you will see there are some custom 3D rope borders in here that you can use as well. But if you want to make your own custom shape, you're going to use the rope link. And this is only available in Aspire. This won't be available in VCarve.
Okay. So now we have it imported into our job. At this point, you're going to want to size that rope link to be the width that you want the border. So if you have that selected and click the letter T on your keyboard, that's a shortcut to go to your transform tool, which will scale that rope link. We're going to make sure the X and Y is linked together as well as the auto scale Z.
And the height of this shape is going to determine the width of the border. So right now the height is set to 0.8 inches. Let's say we wanted it to be three quarters of an inch, so we'll scale it to three quarters of an inch in height. Click apply. And that will scale that rope link down to be that three quarter inch tall.
So that means the width of the rope is going to be three quarters of an inch. Okay. Once you have that set, we're going to click close. Then we're going to make sure we're in the modeling tab. And the tool we're going to use is called extrude and weave. It's going to be the third tool. So we're going to select that.
And the first thing we need is a drive rail. So that's going to be our custom 2D shape for the border. So we're going to select that in the 2D view and click use selection. And then down here, we want to click use a component that will select the component that's in your job. If you have multiple components, just dropdown this list and find the rope link.
And then we want to click fill with multiple copies. So that's going to copy that shape along that vector rail. And then next, you need to set an overlap percentage. I find that 60% generally works pretty good. You can test it out at 60%, and if it doesn't work for you, you can adjust that number. And next you want to make sure the flip alternate copies is turned off because we don't want to flip those.
And also in this case, we do not have any intersections, so we don't have to worry about the weave option as well. So that's going to be turned off. And finally, we want to come down here to the bottom and we want to make sure we set it to merge. That will merge all the rope links together and then we can give it a name.
We could say rope border and then click apply. And now you can see that copied that rope link and had a 60% overlap on each one and it distorted it along the rail of the vector. And if we go to the 3D view, you can see what our final component would look like. So as you could see, it looks like a rope border now.
And if you're happy with that, just click close. And now in your component tree, you're going to have that custom rope border as well as the rope link. If you want it to make another one. If not, you can now delete that rope link and be left just with the border. And that's how you can easily make a custom 3D rope border. If you have any questions on that, just let me know.
I'm going to come down here and choose panel number 54, so I'm going to double click on that to bring it in. And this panel is going to work nice because it has nice round edges and the rope border will flow on those smooth curves much better than it will with sharp corners. If you wanted to use something with sharp corners, you may have to use the fillet tool to create a radius corner before you turn it into a rope border.
So now that we have our 2D vector, we now need the 3D rope link to turn this into a 3D rope border. So we're going to find that in the border folder. And if we scroll down, you're going to find what's called the rope link. So this will be the link that you need to make the custom 3D border.
So we're going to double click on that to bring in to our job. And you will see there are some custom 3D rope borders in here that you can use as well. But if you want to make your own custom shape, you're going to use the rope link. And this is only available in Aspire. This won't be available in VCarve.
Okay. So now we have it imported into our job. At this point, you're going to want to size that rope link to be the width that you want the border. So if you have that selected and click the letter T on your keyboard, that's a shortcut to go to your transform tool, which will scale that rope link. We're going to make sure the X and Y is linked together as well as the auto scale Z.
And the height of this shape is going to determine the width of the border. So right now the height is set to 0.8 inches. Let's say we wanted it to be three quarters of an inch, so we'll scale it to three quarters of an inch in height. Click apply. And that will scale that rope link down to be that three quarter inch tall.
So that means the width of the rope is going to be three quarters of an inch. Okay. Once you have that set, we're going to click close. Then we're going to make sure we're in the modeling tab. And the tool we're going to use is called extrude and weave. It's going to be the third tool. So we're going to select that.
And the first thing we need is a drive rail. So that's going to be our custom 2D shape for the border. So we're going to select that in the 2D view and click use selection. And then down here, we want to click use a component that will select the component that's in your job. If you have multiple components, just dropdown this list and find the rope link.
And then we want to click fill with multiple copies. So that's going to copy that shape along that vector rail. And then next, you need to set an overlap percentage. I find that 60% generally works pretty good. You can test it out at 60%, and if it doesn't work for you, you can adjust that number. And next you want to make sure the flip alternate copies is turned off because we don't want to flip those.
And also in this case, we do not have any intersections, so we don't have to worry about the weave option as well. So that's going to be turned off. And finally, we want to come down here to the bottom and we want to make sure we set it to merge. That will merge all the rope links together and then we can give it a name.
We could say rope border and then click apply. And now you can see that copied that rope link and had a 60% overlap on each one and it distorted it along the rail of the vector. And if we go to the 3D view, you can see what our final component would look like. So as you could see, it looks like a rope border now.
And if you're happy with that, just click close. And now in your component tree, you're going to have that custom rope border as well as the rope link. If you want it to make another one. If not, you can now delete that rope link and be left just with the border. And that's how you can easily make a custom 3D rope border. If you have any questions on that, just let me know.
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