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Fillet on Extruded Text

Thanks for looking at this! I'm just learning on the Trial Version of Atom3D. Coming from Sketchup 2017 and trying to find a viable replacement. I think I have.

Working through a simple design for a branding iron logo, I've extruded some text from a flat plane part. Then it occurred to me that the text could benefit from support at the base.

So, I'm thinking that I should have the base edge/corner of each letter be filleted to add strength in that area. I tried one letter on a test part, selected the many edges that meet the base after an extrude of the letter. Well, it looks like Atom3D choked on the complexity or something. Obviously, that isn't a viable way to fillet all my letters.

Since I'm just starting to learn the ropes, am I missing a simple method to create a fillet around the base of each letter that I extrude from a part plane?
 

HaroldL

Alibre Super User
You could just select the surface that the text is created on. The fillet tool will try to fill all edges on that surface. Be careful though as sometimes the fillet needs a rounded corner in order to work out its transitions. So you may need to fillet the edges that are perpendicular to the surface first. Doing that may make it possible to select an edge and let the Tangency function work its magic.
 
Selecting the part surface didn't complete. The process ended with an error message of too many something-or-others.

I thought maybe to "loft" the text instead of extrude, but that dialog is beyond my comprehension.
 

Max

Administrator
Staff member
Selecting the part surface didn't complete. The process ended with an error message of too many something-or-others.

I thought maybe to "loft" the text instead of extrude, but that dialog is beyond my comprehension.

Welcome to Alibre!

Perhaps post your file here. Text is tricky because to your eye it just looks like text but at the microscopic geometry level, unlike almost any other geometry, it can have very find microinflections or sharp corners. This is due to how fonts are designed, and how they were never really designed for 3D modeling applications. You can use just about any font and it will work for extrudes - but some font designer 20 years ago that made the font you chose may have not made a very clean vector definition, from a 3D modeling perspective, and that could complicate things today.

Anywho, post it and we can take a look. This particular thing is a bit trial and error and is highly dependent on font selection.
 
Thanks @Max . I think I'll just drop that filleting of text for now and apply that learning process to something a bit less variable / challenging and more mechanical. :D

I've now done more with Atom3D than I've accomplished with other false starts, so I'm happy for now.
 

Max

Administrator
Staff member
Thanks @Max . I think I'll just drop that filleting of text for now and apply that learning process to something a bit less variable / challenging and more mechanical. :D

I've now done more with Atom3D than I've accomplished with other false starts, so I'm happy for now.

Great to hear! With fillets on text, using a smaller radius is the most readily straightforward way to overcome bad font design. The question is whether the fillet is required to be so small as to be meaningless. There are some other approaches too - ping us when you might be ready to learn about those - but there are certainly higher value skills than this, agreed :D
 
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