Letter B

Drawing letters of the alphabet seems to be a good way to show different abilities of CADZilla. This tutorial shows the drawing of a B, emphasizing arcs and offsets. Again the drawing is made with a snap spacing of 0.5 units. Draw a line from 0,0,0 to 0,6,0. To draw the lower hump of the B use the arc function , found as "Arc From Start Circumference End" under the "Polygons" menu. This function makes a circle arc given the point of the start of the arc, any point on the circumference between the start and end, and the point at the end of the arc. The input points are (1,0,0), (2.5, 1.5, 0), (1, 3, 0).

To make the upper hump of the B, use the arcCRAA function, found as "Arc From Center Radius Angle Angle" under the "Polygons" menu. This function takes an arc center, radius, and start and end angle to make a circle arc. The input values are center = (1, 4.5, 0), radius = 1.5, startAngle = -90, endAngle = 90.
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To make the inner contours of the B, use the offsetPoly function , found as "Offset Polygon" under the "Polygon Constructions" menu. It takes any polygon and creates a new version of it that is every where offset by a given distance. The new polygon is parallel to the original polygon everywhere. Note this is not a simple global shift of the original. The positive distance offsets to one side, a negative offsets to the other. All functions in CADZilla that take objects as input give three options regarding what to do with the input objects. If the "Consume Original" option is selected, input objects disappear and become part of the resultant object. They still exist: in the case of the offset they can be found as part of the offsets "polygons" field. If the "Consume Copy" option is selected, a copy of the input objects is created and the copies become part of the resultant object. If the "Consume Link" option is selected, a *link* copy is is made of the original and the link copy becomes part of the resultant object. Chose the "Consume Original" if you don't need the input objects for anything else. Chose "Consume Copy" if you want to keep the input around for other purposes, and you don't want the resultant object to be related to the input objects you are keeping. Chose "Consume Link" if you want to use the input in multiple constructions, and you want them to all be identical. For this offset, "Consume Copy" was used, and the offset distance was "0.25". And another vertical is drawn for later.
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The next step is to extend the small offset ends to the vertical line on the right. To do this use the extendPoly function found as the "Extend Polygons" function under the "Polygon Constructions" menu. This function extends the ends of exiting polygons to a given boundary. The polygons are extended by either creating a special extension shape that holds the extended polygon and generates a single geometry that is extended, or by simply adding a line. To use this function pick the vertical line on the right and hit the "Start Extending" button. Then pick the ends of the polygons to extend.

Remove the vertical line and draw two lines to close the two holes in the B.