Adding thickness to birail surface
 

How would you do it? I've been playing with bevel and not getting the result I want. It seems this would be easy to do.
Thanks.

Can you elaborate further on this erikober?

Sorry Undseth. Here is a screenshot. A birail surface created from 3 curves. I want it to have some thickness rather than the thin shell that it is now. Does this make sense?

Thanks.

dunno how they do it in maya...but in rhino and max....i just add a lip using ruled surf from an offset curve...im sure this will work in maya as well

hmm Do you wish to make a volume out of the three curves?

If, so, do you want sharp or round edges?

Well since you offered, I'd love to know how to either :)

It is easily answered... I don't know :)

edit:
I dont know any tool for converting a nurbs surface into an enclosed volume.

I would offset the surface both ways, with a positive and a negative offset value, and do some skinning on the edges in one way or another.

convert to polys. :D

lol, but in Nurbs, if you construct your curves with the lip built in, it'd probably be easier

Okay, now you've got me going ;)

So the lip is built into the profile curves? And all three? How would you proceed after converting to polys, if you took that route?

thanks guys.

What is a "lip" ???

lip = border edge

If you convert to polys, simply extruding the faces should get you the results you want, if I understand you correctly.

Well I've been playing with it, and I'll have to keep playing with it :)

After converting to polys, extruding faces is, so far, making a mess. I'm guessing I need to finesse the tessellate options when converting to make something that will extrude cleanly. It just seems that I should be able to build the thickness into the birail profile, but I haven't ever had any luck creating such a surface with closed paths to create that thickness. The tool only seems to like open paths with point to point connections to the rail curves.

I'll keep trying, but now I have to get back to work :(

Thanks again everyone!

you can try selecting edge and extrude that.