Modifiers in Modeling: Helicoide [ Blender ]

A helicoid is a surface generated by moving a straight line with two movements:

• A rotation around an axis or core,.
• A translation in the direction of the axis.

This generation model is applicable to the construction or manufacture of many technical elements, as helical stairs, the drill bits, arid drag elements etc..

In Blender a helix can be generated using “Hooks”, extrusions and modifier “Array” we have seen in modeling.

To generate the surface will need a generator, namely, a straight line. This line can be obtained from a plane by deleting two of its vertices (in edit mode select all vertices and press the key “x”).

In addition to delete two of its vertices, We will move the others so that they are aligned with the axes of the object as shown in the image.

Generating surface

We will create an object “Empty” the origin to be later used in the transformation “Array” that I will use to generate the surface.

The segment of surface generation

The surface will be generated from an elementary part to “estiraremos” by “Hook”.

We will first perform an extrusion of the line segment. To do this we select it and go into edit mode by pressing the button “Tab”. To extrude the object press the key “And“. We must not move mouse to not moving the extruded points, Since that is done with the “hook”. To add the “Hook” the line segment we will press keys simultaneously extruded “ctrl” and “h”.

“Ctrl” + “H”

Hook new appearance is similar to that of an object “Empty”

We will make the new hook is “son” We created the first empty, first selecting the hook, then the object and pressing empty “Ctrl”+”P”

“Ctrl”+”P”

Array modifier

Select the segment (flat extrusion) and add a modifier Array

Array modifier

It only remains to adjust the parameters of our surface modifier for helical.

• Disable “Relative Offset”
• Activate “Object Offset”
• Indicate which is the “Empty” el el object used to offset.
• We will increase the repeat count of instances “Count”

If we move towards the empty “The” and rotated about this axis we will see how to generate the surface we were looking.

If we increase the number of sections, new loops will be generated on the surface.

Straight axial helix in front

The final result may vary depending on the angle of rotation used, the translation and the number of instances defined. Applying a scale change will generate conical propellers.

Helicoide axial recto

• Helical staircase

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