Aspire model combine question

[Chuck Keysor]

Hello Aspire/Shopbot experts. I am using Aspire 4.5 to make a 3d re-creation of a long gone Victorian house decoration. The right side of the first image shows the only picture I have to work with, and on the left side you can see the model I have made in Aspire. (The model doesn't match the original because: a) the customer has asked me to significantly change some elements, b) I'm not done yet. So there are some big differences.)

My problem is that in order to get the central flower to appear as shown in the image entitled "This is what I want to get.", I had to use Photoshop to take my Aspire generated model of the flower and paste it on top of my "base" layer. My "base" layer is shown in the second image.

If I work entirely within Aspire to combine the flower model with the "base" layer, I get merging of the base with the flower as shown in image 3, or in detail in image 4.

I can't get what I need no matter which combine modes I use (add, subtract, merge high, merge low,,,,,). And of course this happens because my base layer is full of dips, grooves and assorted discontinuities, because I have a bunch of individually sculpted components. So I can't go ahead and bake all the base layer parts together and carefully fill them in because I am not done with the model yet, and the little loose models are subject to change.

In Rhino, I could of course just place the flower based upon coordinates and not have it combine in any way with the base layer. But I can't figure out how to do this within Aspire.

So how can I take an in-process Aspire model and easily make an image like the first one which I can show to the customer as the project moves along, without having to resort to using Photoshop to get what I want?

Thank you for your help, Chuck

[myxpykalix]

I didn't watch it but see if this helps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afEtHWDMLeY

[srwtlc]

Chuck,

Without seeing your file, the combine modes, and the order of your components in the component list, this is a bit of a guess. You may have to move the flower up in the list and change the combine modes to merge (looks like an add on the background now), and then add a base height to the flower to bring it up/out of the background.

[Chuck Keysor]

Thank you Jack and Scott for your assistance!

a) Jack, that software on the link you provided was pretty cool, but it didn't relate to my Aspire issue. But it was interesting to watch.

b) Scott, you hit the nail on the head! I needed to move the flower all of the way down to the bottom layer. I had moved it around before, but failed to think that I may need to move all the way to the bottom. (My intuition says that the top of the layer stack should be the top of the virtual/(what you see on the screen) stack, but it is the opposite in Aspire.)

Thank you!!!! Chuck