Tabsurf Conundrum

[ebmanne]

There I was happily drawing away in acad when I drew a tabulated surface on an arc with a vertical line as the path, the line was drawn up in the Z axis, and when I used the tabsurf command it drew a nice arced surface in the opposite direction (down) to my path. I tried changing the ucs to see if this would have any affect but it always had the same results. Help!

[mjfarrell]

Let me get you sorted out on this.

From my command line:

Current wire frame density: SURFTAB1=6
Select object for path curve:
Select object for direction vector: *Cancel* Note this prompt is for the DIRECTION
the surface will be created in.

So say I wanted a half tube perpendicular to the top view.
I draw the arc segment that I want, issue a roated3d comand
and from the center rotate it about the Y-axis, then I draw a line from
the mid point of the arc to the right the length of my desired tabsurf.

Issue the tabsurf command and follow the above prompts...
the result a semi-circular surface that runs left ti right on my screen.

Moral of the story, draw your Direction vector in the direction and plane
you want to go tabulating in. And draw the shape perpendicular to that path.

[ebmanne]

When I set up the object to be the direction vector the way I wanted it to draw, tabsurf drew the shape 180 deg in the wrong dir. when I repeated the exact command the next day it worked properly. Nothing else has changed that I know of.