Top 8 Methods to Copy 3D Components
How to use several different tools to make copies of 3D components in VCarve and Aspire.
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Video Transcript:
Sometimes when working with 3D components, you have to make copies of those components. And it seems like it could be a very simple task, which it is, but there's actually eight different ways to do it, and each way is used for a different situation. So in this video, I'm going to show all eight of those ways and then you can decide which one works best for your situation. So first off, we're going to start with a piece of 3D clip art found in the clip art tab, and it is the Christmas bells.
So if you just double click on that, that will bring it into your job right here. And then we could split our view at the top. So it could see the 2D and 3D at the same time. And you'll see in the 3D view, we have our Christmas bells. So this is the component we're going to work with
and we're going to make copies of this eight different ways. So let's go to the modeling tab. You'll see in our component tree we have just the single Christmas Bell component. And before we get started, I just want to mention everything I'm about to show you in. This lesson can be done in Vcarve Desktop. Vcarve Pro or Aspire with exception to method number eight. That will be Aspire only. And also the tools that I use in the modeling tab that are down here in this lesson are only on the modeling tab in Aspire, but these same tools can be accessed in the drawing tab
at the very bottom from Vcarve. Okay, so let's go back to the modeling tab and make sure you stick around for the last two methods, because those ones are really cool. All right. So now we're back to our component right here. And let's look at the easiest way to copy and paste these.
And that is just by right clicking. And click copy. Or you can also use the keyboard shortcuts control C and then just right click and paste.
And you can also use the keyboard shortcut. And just keep in mind when you copy and paste something, it will copy and paste in the exact same location. So if you move it, you'll see. Now you have two and then in the component tree we also have two. So that's the first way Let's look at way number two and this one basically does the same thing, but it's a little bit easier and that's by double clicking on the component to put it in the transform mode so you can actually move it. And if you hold the control key and click and drag while holding the control key and then release your mouse and then release the control key it will actually make a copy just like that. And you'll see you also place a new one in the component tree so you can just click holding ctrl, drag and release and you'll see every time you do that it creates another copy. So that's much easier than the copy and paste method. All right. So let's look at method number three, and I'm going to take this component, actually move it down here in the corner for this one. And this one, we're going to use the array tools so we have the array copy. So we're going to select that.
And in here you can decide how many copies you want for rows and columns.
You can specify the gap or offset between those shapes, and you can also rotate the shapes around if you wanted to. And then you could also displace each row on column. So there's a lot of options here. I'm not going to get into all of those options, but you could see if we did three rows, three columns, one inch gap between and click copy, you will see
it will place all those components there and they're all spaced one inch apart and there's three by three for rows and columns. So that is a simple way to make nice even rows and columns of shapes. And you'll see it will place a new component for each one of those shapes. Now let's look at method number four, and that's going to be our next array copy tool.
That is the circular copy. So if we select our object with this selected,
we can specify the rotation center that we want. So in this particular job, it's 20 by 20 and the zero is in the lower left. So if I make the center point ten by ten for the X and Y, that will make it perfectly centered. So do ten in the x, ten in the Y, and then I could specify how many copies I want. So let's say I wanted six, could type in there six.
And I could decide if I want to rotate the copies or if I want to keep them vertical. So you could decide what works best for you. Let's rotate the copies and we're going to go a total angle of 360 degrees, which would give us a full circle. You can also do a step angle if you want to do an exact angle in between this and then you click copy and you'll see
it will make a copy all the way round with six shapes and it will evenly space those. If you use the 360 degree option. And then once again, if you close this, it did make another copy all in the component tree.
All right, Method number five this one you can get very creative with
this one is copy along a vector path. So we first need a vector to work with. This could be open or closed if we go to the new freehand draw tool. You can click on drag and make a nice curved line like that and whatever shape you want to use you can do this for. And then what you're going to do is go back to the modeling tab and you're going to select copy along vectors and then you're going to select the component and hold shift and select your vector line. And then in here you can specify the distance between copies or the number of copies. So let's say we wanted six shapes on this line and that will evenly space them. And then you can also decide if you want to align them with the curve, which would rotate the shapes, or if you turn that off, it'll keep them vertical. However you want to do that. If you click a line and then click copy, you will see it will rotate the shapes along that vector line. So like I said, you can get very creative with that and sometimes that would be nice if you had like a rope or something you were trying to attach a component to,
You can just follow along that vector path. And then once again, we have all new components in the component tree. Okay? Method number six is the nesting tool. So if we click nesting and we select our object, this one,
you can usually fill in your project much more with over the array copy
because the nesting tool will count for the shape of the object. So you can specify your tool diameter the clearance you want in between. So let's say we wanted a half inch clearance in between and we're using a quarter inch tool and we wanted a border gap around the edge to be a half inch. And then you can specify even more if you want to rotate the parts,
if you want to mirror the parts and if you want the best fitment possible, I usually go down to like a one degree step angle. Just keep in mind, this will take a little bit of time to calculate because it's got to rotate all the shapes. One degree. And if you turn this off, it will leave them all the same angle that they are currently. So that would depend on your grained direction and how you want those parts to rotate.
You can even do like 90 degrees will say, All right, and then we can specify where you want to nest from. We can go a lower left corner and then you can go along the X direction or the Y direction, and then you just have to specify the number of copies. Unfortunately, there is not a button to say, just fill up the sheet. You have to kind of guess how many you're going to fit in here. So let's try maybe 15 click apply and that will put a number there. 15 and then just click preview and you'll see Vectric will do its best
within the settings you set there to fill them up with the number of copies you selected. So you can see this does not look very optimized,
but we can just change around some settings and we can get that further optimized. So personally I would lower the clearance down. Well, try point one and click preview and there we go. It fits a little bit more in there. If you want to fit even more. I would recommend lowering the rotation step angle. We rotated it down to one degree and click preview.
You'll see every time you do that, it will start to fit more and more,
so it could still further optimize us even better because you see we have a little bit of blank space here, but that's basically how the nesting feature works. And if it does create any additional copies that cannot fit on this sheet, it will add in a brand new sheet to work with. So now once you click okay, you'll see you will now have multiple sheets with multiple components in each one. All right. And method number seven is really cool. If we bring in a guideline, I'm just going to show you this
for an example here. I'm going to put out the center line of our project
in the horizontal and vertical direction. So with this one is is the mirror mode. So I just put those lines there to represent the line that vectric mirrors are crossed for horizontal and vertical, and you can place this object anywhere on your project and you'll see when you move it, it will move in a 3D view. But right now we can move it anywhere we want on the job and that's exactly where it will be. So if you right click on the level that the component is in and go down to mirror mode,
you'll see are many different options to choose from. So you can mirror left to right. And that means whatever you do on the left side will automatically mirror to the right side and then you have a bunch more options right to left top the bottom, bottom to top. And then you have all four quadrants, which is where each one of these rectangles are.
So you have top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right. So let's say we went to the top left quadrant. That's going to be the one we are working in. If you click on that, you'll see that will automatically mirror this shape across the center line on all four quadrants. And you'll see it will not show up in the 2D view. It will also not show up in your component tree, but the level will change the icon to represent
that red line that's representing the mirror lines. But what's really cool about this is this is now dynamic. So that means whatever we do to this top left quadrant will automatically be mirrored to all four quadrants. So if we scaled it up to make it bigger, you'll see in the 3D view everything else got bigger. If you rotate it, it will rotate all the shapes at the same time. And from using that circular copy tool, earlier rotation point got put way up here so we can drag that back down to the center and now we can rotate that along the center there and you'll see all the shapes do the same thing. So no matter what you do to this top left quadrant, you can even add more components in here. Each one of those will automatically be mirrored to all four quadrants. And if you didn't want all four, you can just right click on the level, go back to mirror mode and let's just say we wanted one on the left and the right
click left and right, and that will only place one on both sides.
And this means you can only work on the left side for this particular mirror mode. So you can see, you can move it down here in the lower
quadrant and still work because we did left to right. But once you start crossing that line, it will start to combine both of those shapes together. So whatever's past that line, it's going to disregard and it will mirror the other half to the other side. So just keep that in mind.
But that does allow you to make some pretty neat designs when you start moving them together a little bit closer. So you could see, you could rotate it, something like that. And now it looks like two belts together
and they are perfectly symmetrical and you'll see what that looks like.
So you can see you can come up with some really cool designs just by playing around with those mirroring settings. And then if you ever change your mind and you didn't want that mirroring effect, you just right click on the level, go down to mirror mode and just click no mirroring and I'll go back to your regular components. All right. Now the final method I'm going to show you today is the texture area component. So if you select your object and then go to this button here called create textured area
component, this one is only going to be available in Aspire. So we're going to click on that. And in this tool, it allows you to change a bunch of different options to adjust the spacing, adjust the X and Y shift and create reflections. So this is very similar to the array copy method. We looked at number three, but this one has a really big difference
and I'll show you if you click apply, you'll see it just made copies of all of our components and it will automatically fill up your job unless you selected a vector to fit these into. So you can see it looks normal, just like the array copy tool. But let's look at some major differences here. So first, if you go to the edit mode here, you'll see or edit the original component that we created and you could make it bigger and you'll see everything will update and you can also rotate it or do whatever you want, just like in the mirroring mode, except this one will array copy through our design. So that's one major difference. Let's click apply to save that and click close. Now another thing you'll see
is it only created one single component, not a big copy of components like it did before. And you'll also see when we select this object
and try to scale it down, you'll see the components stay the same size
and it actually just removes whatever is outside of that box that we're scaling down. So you can scale just one side if you wanted to or multiple sides, you'll see the bigger you make it, the more components it'll fill up. So this is like making a pattern and I'll keep the components the same size no matter how big you scale it. So that is one major difference
of the texture area component over the array copy. And then if you did want to scale everything together, you would first just make the size you want to begin with. So let's make it something like that. And then you're going to click the button that says Bake. And now when you do that and you go to scale, you could see now all the components get bigger and it does not add or subtract any additional ones. All right. So those are eight different ways you can copy components. Let me know down in the comments which one you like the best. And if you learn something new in this video, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
So if you just double click on that, that will bring it into your job right here. And then we could split our view at the top. So it could see the 2D and 3D at the same time. And you'll see in the 3D view, we have our Christmas bells. So this is the component we're going to work with
and we're going to make copies of this eight different ways. So let's go to the modeling tab. You'll see in our component tree we have just the single Christmas Bell component. And before we get started, I just want to mention everything I'm about to show you in. This lesson can be done in Vcarve Desktop. Vcarve Pro or Aspire with exception to method number eight. That will be Aspire only. And also the tools that I use in the modeling tab that are down here in this lesson are only on the modeling tab in Aspire, but these same tools can be accessed in the drawing tab
at the very bottom from Vcarve. Okay, so let's go back to the modeling tab and make sure you stick around for the last two methods, because those ones are really cool. All right. So now we're back to our component right here. And let's look at the easiest way to copy and paste these.
And that is just by right clicking. And click copy. Or you can also use the keyboard shortcuts control C and then just right click and paste.
And you can also use the keyboard shortcut. And just keep in mind when you copy and paste something, it will copy and paste in the exact same location. So if you move it, you'll see. Now you have two and then in the component tree we also have two. So that's the first way Let's look at way number two and this one basically does the same thing, but it's a little bit easier and that's by double clicking on the component to put it in the transform mode so you can actually move it. And if you hold the control key and click and drag while holding the control key and then release your mouse and then release the control key it will actually make a copy just like that. And you'll see you also place a new one in the component tree so you can just click holding ctrl, drag and release and you'll see every time you do that it creates another copy. So that's much easier than the copy and paste method. All right. So let's look at method number three, and I'm going to take this component, actually move it down here in the corner for this one. And this one, we're going to use the array tools so we have the array copy. So we're going to select that.
And in here you can decide how many copies you want for rows and columns.
You can specify the gap or offset between those shapes, and you can also rotate the shapes around if you wanted to. And then you could also displace each row on column. So there's a lot of options here. I'm not going to get into all of those options, but you could see if we did three rows, three columns, one inch gap between and click copy, you will see
it will place all those components there and they're all spaced one inch apart and there's three by three for rows and columns. So that is a simple way to make nice even rows and columns of shapes. And you'll see it will place a new component for each one of those shapes. Now let's look at method number four, and that's going to be our next array copy tool.
That is the circular copy. So if we select our object with this selected,
we can specify the rotation center that we want. So in this particular job, it's 20 by 20 and the zero is in the lower left. So if I make the center point ten by ten for the X and Y, that will make it perfectly centered. So do ten in the x, ten in the Y, and then I could specify how many copies I want. So let's say I wanted six, could type in there six.
And I could decide if I want to rotate the copies or if I want to keep them vertical. So you could decide what works best for you. Let's rotate the copies and we're going to go a total angle of 360 degrees, which would give us a full circle. You can also do a step angle if you want to do an exact angle in between this and then you click copy and you'll see
it will make a copy all the way round with six shapes and it will evenly space those. If you use the 360 degree option. And then once again, if you close this, it did make another copy all in the component tree.
All right, Method number five this one you can get very creative with
this one is copy along a vector path. So we first need a vector to work with. This could be open or closed if we go to the new freehand draw tool. You can click on drag and make a nice curved line like that and whatever shape you want to use you can do this for. And then what you're going to do is go back to the modeling tab and you're going to select copy along vectors and then you're going to select the component and hold shift and select your vector line. And then in here you can specify the distance between copies or the number of copies. So let's say we wanted six shapes on this line and that will evenly space them. And then you can also decide if you want to align them with the curve, which would rotate the shapes, or if you turn that off, it'll keep them vertical. However you want to do that. If you click a line and then click copy, you will see it will rotate the shapes along that vector line. So like I said, you can get very creative with that and sometimes that would be nice if you had like a rope or something you were trying to attach a component to,
You can just follow along that vector path. And then once again, we have all new components in the component tree. Okay? Method number six is the nesting tool. So if we click nesting and we select our object, this one,
you can usually fill in your project much more with over the array copy
because the nesting tool will count for the shape of the object. So you can specify your tool diameter the clearance you want in between. So let's say we wanted a half inch clearance in between and we're using a quarter inch tool and we wanted a border gap around the edge to be a half inch. And then you can specify even more if you want to rotate the parts,
if you want to mirror the parts and if you want the best fitment possible, I usually go down to like a one degree step angle. Just keep in mind, this will take a little bit of time to calculate because it's got to rotate all the shapes. One degree. And if you turn this off, it will leave them all the same angle that they are currently. So that would depend on your grained direction and how you want those parts to rotate.
You can even do like 90 degrees will say, All right, and then we can specify where you want to nest from. We can go a lower left corner and then you can go along the X direction or the Y direction, and then you just have to specify the number of copies. Unfortunately, there is not a button to say, just fill up the sheet. You have to kind of guess how many you're going to fit in here. So let's try maybe 15 click apply and that will put a number there. 15 and then just click preview and you'll see Vectric will do its best
within the settings you set there to fill them up with the number of copies you selected. So you can see this does not look very optimized,
but we can just change around some settings and we can get that further optimized. So personally I would lower the clearance down. Well, try point one and click preview and there we go. It fits a little bit more in there. If you want to fit even more. I would recommend lowering the rotation step angle. We rotated it down to one degree and click preview.
You'll see every time you do that, it will start to fit more and more,
so it could still further optimize us even better because you see we have a little bit of blank space here, but that's basically how the nesting feature works. And if it does create any additional copies that cannot fit on this sheet, it will add in a brand new sheet to work with. So now once you click okay, you'll see you will now have multiple sheets with multiple components in each one. All right. And method number seven is really cool. If we bring in a guideline, I'm just going to show you this
for an example here. I'm going to put out the center line of our project
in the horizontal and vertical direction. So with this one is is the mirror mode. So I just put those lines there to represent the line that vectric mirrors are crossed for horizontal and vertical, and you can place this object anywhere on your project and you'll see when you move it, it will move in a 3D view. But right now we can move it anywhere we want on the job and that's exactly where it will be. So if you right click on the level that the component is in and go down to mirror mode,
you'll see are many different options to choose from. So you can mirror left to right. And that means whatever you do on the left side will automatically mirror to the right side and then you have a bunch more options right to left top the bottom, bottom to top. And then you have all four quadrants, which is where each one of these rectangles are.
So you have top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right. So let's say we went to the top left quadrant. That's going to be the one we are working in. If you click on that, you'll see that will automatically mirror this shape across the center line on all four quadrants. And you'll see it will not show up in the 2D view. It will also not show up in your component tree, but the level will change the icon to represent
that red line that's representing the mirror lines. But what's really cool about this is this is now dynamic. So that means whatever we do to this top left quadrant will automatically be mirrored to all four quadrants. So if we scaled it up to make it bigger, you'll see in the 3D view everything else got bigger. If you rotate it, it will rotate all the shapes at the same time. And from using that circular copy tool, earlier rotation point got put way up here so we can drag that back down to the center and now we can rotate that along the center there and you'll see all the shapes do the same thing. So no matter what you do to this top left quadrant, you can even add more components in here. Each one of those will automatically be mirrored to all four quadrants. And if you didn't want all four, you can just right click on the level, go back to mirror mode and let's just say we wanted one on the left and the right
click left and right, and that will only place one on both sides.
And this means you can only work on the left side for this particular mirror mode. So you can see, you can move it down here in the lower
quadrant and still work because we did left to right. But once you start crossing that line, it will start to combine both of those shapes together. So whatever's past that line, it's going to disregard and it will mirror the other half to the other side. So just keep that in mind.
But that does allow you to make some pretty neat designs when you start moving them together a little bit closer. So you could see, you could rotate it, something like that. And now it looks like two belts together
and they are perfectly symmetrical and you'll see what that looks like.
So you can see you can come up with some really cool designs just by playing around with those mirroring settings. And then if you ever change your mind and you didn't want that mirroring effect, you just right click on the level, go down to mirror mode and just click no mirroring and I'll go back to your regular components. All right. Now the final method I'm going to show you today is the texture area component. So if you select your object and then go to this button here called create textured area
component, this one is only going to be available in Aspire. So we're going to click on that. And in this tool, it allows you to change a bunch of different options to adjust the spacing, adjust the X and Y shift and create reflections. So this is very similar to the array copy method. We looked at number three, but this one has a really big difference
and I'll show you if you click apply, you'll see it just made copies of all of our components and it will automatically fill up your job unless you selected a vector to fit these into. So you can see it looks normal, just like the array copy tool. But let's look at some major differences here. So first, if you go to the edit mode here, you'll see or edit the original component that we created and you could make it bigger and you'll see everything will update and you can also rotate it or do whatever you want, just like in the mirroring mode, except this one will array copy through our design. So that's one major difference. Let's click apply to save that and click close. Now another thing you'll see
is it only created one single component, not a big copy of components like it did before. And you'll also see when we select this object
and try to scale it down, you'll see the components stay the same size
and it actually just removes whatever is outside of that box that we're scaling down. So you can scale just one side if you wanted to or multiple sides, you'll see the bigger you make it, the more components it'll fill up. So this is like making a pattern and I'll keep the components the same size no matter how big you scale it. So that is one major difference
of the texture area component over the array copy. And then if you did want to scale everything together, you would first just make the size you want to begin with. So let's make it something like that. And then you're going to click the button that says Bake. And now when you do that and you go to scale, you could see now all the components get bigger and it does not add or subtract any additional ones. All right. So those are eight different ways you can copy components. Let me know down in the comments which one you like the best. And if you learn something new in this video, make sure you like and subscribe for more.
