scaling down

[Chris]

I have a large organic(irregular) shape that I am trying to scale down. I can't think how to do this, brain fog. Any ideas?

[Mike Paulsen]

Eat less and get more exercise.

(You may be thinking of a pantograph.)

[Allen Roy]

How big is it?

[Owen Lawrence]

Can't you be a little more specific? Is this a 2d shape? Is it a concrete object, a drawing, or just an idea?

Assuming 2d drawing, overlay a grid. To scale it down start with a finer grid and just transfer curves in each grid cell to its corresponding cell in the finer grid.

Without more info there aren't going to be very good suggestions.

Assuming it's not a 2d drawing, use lasers, expensive computer hardware and software, and a highly trained consultant.

- Owen -

[J T]

Sun, Oct 14, 2007, 10:23pm [e-mail] (Owen=A0Lawrence) doth sayeth: Without more info there aren't going to be very good suggestions.

I'da said "any useful" suggestions, but that's close enough. Garbage in, garbage out. OP - always give details, lotsa details - if you actually expect any useful answers, that is.

JOAT "I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth." "Really? Why not?" "I don't know, thur. I didn't athk."

[Leon]

Ecercise brain more too. ;~)

[Chris]

OK, Sorry. I should have given more info, didn't want to bury you with details. I have a slab cut from a tree. It's about 30" - 36" across and has a very interesting shape, Imagine the petals on a flower, except irregular. I want to make a coffee table out of it and I'm think about the legs or stand for it. I don't think regular legs go well with this kind of thing, and I've looked at how Nakashima handled things like this. I had an idea where I would use a second slab from the same tree as a stand. I'm trying to figure out how to carve a similar shape into the stand so it mimics the top.

[Hoosierpopi]

Assuming 2D here, too.

TAKE A PICTURE (slide film) project it on surface at size wanted and trace.

TAKE A picture (digital) and have it translated into an AUTOCAD format (Meta file?)

[Hoosierpopi]

how Nakashima handled things

Ho boy!

At any rate, the picture idea should work. It would give you a perfect outline of the stump andcould be projected onto whatever you are cutting the base from to outline the cut line at any size. I believe you can have a digital image transferred to a 35mm slide and you should be abble to find a old slide projector some where (library, God Will, Salvation Army, Thrift Store, School

[Puckdropper]

"Chris" wrote in news:lazQi.2721$ [e-mail]:

Warning: Technical message ahead. It has been encoded with ROT26, so to decode please use your ROT13 function twice!

Well... let's see.

One implementation of an integral is an area under a curve. So, your surface is made of lots of curves. Do a curve fit analysis and find curves with high correlation coefficients and add all the areas up. Then, reduce your X and Y components using the lines given by the curve fits so your equations are proportional to the original but have a smaller area.

Puckdropper

[Chris]