Evenly Spaced Edge Loops (Cone Mesh)?

Hi Everyone,

I’ve only been using Blender for approximately one week, so I apologise for asking a question which probably has an obvious answer, but I’ve tried reading through the Blender documentation and Google for the last 45 minutes and haven’t been able to find a solution.

I have a cone mesh (well, in actual fact, it’s a cylinder with one side scaled up) which is 5.7 units in length. I want to create 4 offset edge loops that are evenly spaced 0.05 units apart. Similar to this (excuse the terrible illustration):

I can’t extrude each individual section (or translate the individual vertices), as the linear slope won’t be maintained. In addition, if I create edge loops and then use the edge slide tool, the edge loops won’t be evenly distributed due to the relative scale getting smaller with each increment. Finally, the snaps (CTRL key) seem to be set to too high of a value by default and the SHIFT key isn’t precise enough. What am I missing?

Of course, this may be a non-issue for people without OCD tendencies. :spin:

I would just put a new clean cone object in edit mode and press CTRL-R. Then use the mouse wheel to increase the blue lines till you have the number of cuts you want. Then Click to lock in the count. At this point the mouse becomes active and you can move all the new loops to a new location (which is not what you want to do). So press the ESC to escape out of that final move operation and they will be nicely centered and evenly spaced.

CTRL-R, Mouse Wheel, Click, ESC.

Setup Other geo w/reference vertices, then use the knife tool(k) using new geo as cut points-btw after pressing k press the z to cut through and you have perfect loops!

That kind of precise work…extra plane, extrude edge 0.05 one time, shift+r = redo as many as you like. Set top of target object and knife projection.

Attachments


Plane Array (Constant Z offset). Boolean difference on Cone. Lower part will be gone but the rest is nicely cut.

I like how everyone has a different solution. :slight_smile:
I like the knife project idea better, it’s very straightforward. Eppo’s solution is procedural.
@Atom, I think loop cut won’t work on a cone, since it’s made of triangles.

A trick to make the loop cuts actually work on the cone

At first, use a K (knife) , Z (cut through) and C (constraint to view angle) to cut roughly like that
http://i.imgur.com/7FmCe8S.jpg

Then with that loop selected press G, G ( G 2 times) to use the Edge/Vertex Slide function and move the edge loop to the very top of the cone
http://i.imgur.com/CYseioy.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/g9a5M1D.jpg

Now what looks like triangles are in fact quads, loop cut (CTRL+R) will then work without problem
http://i.imgur.com/KYTgdrc.jpg

Once you’re done, select all and press W -> Remove Double to merge all the vertices that are currently at the top of the cone (then a CTRL+N to recalculate the normals in case the process screwed them up).

I really appreciate the replies. I tried the “knife project” method, and although I eventually got the result I wanted, I had to do the cuts from two opposite sides (i.e. left and right), which resulted in extra vertices being created which needed to be manually delete/dissolved. Perhaps I did something wrong? I’ll give the other methods a try and report back.

using the z key after pressing k for knife cuts through!

I know that is the case for the normal “knife” tool, but what about “knife project”?

press F6 after operation and the option is there

Doesn’t the LoopTools addon have an option for this?

Knight Project, cut through: http://screencast.com/t/QXnaIkpEBR

Thanks for providing the video. I didn’t know I had to press F6 to get the “cut through” option. Had I known this earlier, I wouldn’t have spent so much time rotating the viewport and cleaning up vertices! :confused: I know for next time though!