Cosmic Blobs Tutorials - Curve Pull, Area Pull & Curve Push

Cosmic Blobs has a number of tools designed to let us easily manipulate the surfaces of our blobs. Some of these tools can only be used in conjunction with the three drawing tools. The drawing tools are the Line Drawing Tool,the Arc Drawing Tool and the Freeform Curve Drawing Tool. The three tools can can only be used in conjunction with the drawing tools are the Curve Pull Tool, the Area Pull Tool and the Curve Push Tool. The first two of these tools works with a drawing on a blob. The Curve Push Tool only works with a drawing that is NOT on a blob.

The following tutorials demonstrate each of these tools individually.

Curve Pull Tool

The name of the Curve Pull Tool can be a bit misleading becuase we can use this tool to both pull and push to lift or depress the surface of a blob under and around a drawn line. The Influence Slider determines how the Pull or Push affects the surface. It's useful for creating a mouth or pulling up an eyebrow ridge.

Play Tutorial #12 - The Cosmic Blobs Curve Pull Tool

Area Pull Tool

Like the Curve Pull Tool, this tool can push as well as pull. This tool is only activated when an area is enclosed by one or more joined lines that create a boundary around an area on the blob. Istead of simply pulling under and around the lines, this tool pulls the entire area defined by the lines. This tool is excellent for pulling out the neck, snout or ears of an animal or pushing in an area to form eye-sockets.

It's also useful to add complexity to things like robots. Used with Cosmic Blobs 'Stickers', it can add a three dimensional effect to flat drawings.

Play Tutorial #13 - The Cosmic Blobs Area Pull Tool

Curve Push Tool

This is the only tool of those that utilize the drawing tools to require that the drawing be done in space and not on the blob. It only works by being pushed toward the blob. The Influence Slider determines how much the push will affect the blob's surface. The important thing to remember is that while we may draw a simple line, the Curve Push Tool will treat it a plane and affect a wide area of the blob horizontally.

Of the the three tools, this is the most difficult to use and the least predictable. But, once harnessed it can do things like turn the sharp edge of a cube into a nicely curved edge (Filet).

Play Tutorial #14 - The Cosmic Blobs Curve Push Tool

Here is a sample using both Curve Pull and Area Pull to add complexity to the shape of an insect robot's head.

An Introduction to Cosmic Blobs

How many times do you find the perfect blend of fun and learning? It's a rare combination. It's especially rare to find this combination in a software application that is beautifully designed. Cosmic Blobs IS that rare combination.

There is so much to like about Cosmic Blobs. But, like any program, to get the full benefit of all it has to offer we need to learn some new skills. And, the quicker we learn those skills the faster we can begin to fully enjoy all that CosmicBlobs can do. That's why this blog exists... to provide a place for sharing tips, ideas and tutorials.

We will be posting a full series of user created tutorials. They won't be slick. They aren't official... becuase we have no connection, except as users, to Solidworks or the Cosmic Blobs development team. We may even get some things a bit wrong from time-to-time. These offerings are simply home-brewed video captures of some of the things we've discovered as we've worked with Cosmic Blobs that we think might be helpful to others. We hope you agree.

We have already created four tutorials covering a few of the basics of Cosmic Blobs. Almost everything in these tutorials also applies to CB Model Pro. Each is around 3-4 minutes in length.

Tutorial #1 - The Cosmic Blobs Help System

Learning how to take full advantage of the Cosmic Blobs Help system will go a long way to ensure that your learning experience goes smoothly and quickly. Not only has the CosmicBlobs team provided a unique Step-By-Step context sensitive help system, they've included some very helpful links to their own online tutorials and lessons right in the Cosmic Blobs application. We'll also show you how to bring back the Koala Bear lesson that cam up the first time you started Cosmic Blobs.

Play Tutorial #1 - The CosmicBlobs Help System

Tutorial #2 - The Cosmic Blobs File System

The saving of your blob files is done automatically in Cosmic Blobs. In this tutorial we show you how this works and also tell you why using the 'Copy' feature is sometimes wise.

Play Tutorial #2 - The CosmicBlobs File System


Tutorial #3 - The Cosmic Blobs Undo/Redo Feature

Cosmic Blobs' almost unlimited Undo and Redo keep us from having to worry that we will get into major trouble while experimenting with our blobs. We'll show you one important exception.

Play Tutorial #3 - The CosmicBlobs Undo/Redo Feature

Tutorial #4 - Moving and Rotating Cosmic Blobs blobs

In Cosmic Blobs, we deal with moving and rotating on two levels... the Cosmic Blobs' "World" and individual blobs. In this tutorial we'll show you all the Cosmic Blobs controls for moving and rotating at both of these levels. We'll also show you how to more precisely line up blobs when things go out of kilter.

There are two tutorials related to moving and rotating blobs. After the first was finished, we discovered a cool trick using the 'Mirror' tool to help us lock blobs, so that they turn on a single axis, making our rotations even more precise!

Play Tutorial #4 - Moving and Rotating CosmicBlobs blobs
Play Tutorial #4a - Using Mirror to Rotate More Precisely

We hope that you find all of these tutorials useful... in spite of the occasional background noises from the squeeky chair. Hey! They're FREE!