I am trying to do the same thing, except i need the 'top' of the irregular solid to be smoothly curved, instead of a 'pointy' flat as done here. Suggestions?
This has completely changed since this thread was originally posted.
Attach the file here of what you have so far.
'What version of Inventor are you using?
I have nothing so far, really- I've been playing around, but have only been able to accomplish similar objects to the one attached above. I attached a picl of what I'm trying to mimic- it is an embossing wheel for distressing wood moulding. This particular one was created with welding material. I would like to create a 3D surface with similar geometry in order to use the cut function on other pieces of material, to simulate embossing the wood.
I am using Inventor 2012
There are several ways to go about this.
Your Loft geometry is a little rough (undercut at top) but the general idea is Delete Face that top face and then Patch it with a Tangent patch and Stitch or Sculpt back to a solid.
Often you can simply Split a face, Delete Face and Patch. Several variations of this.
If you take your Sketch3 out of the Loft you get a good idea of the results using a Tangent Boundary Patch.
Sometimes you go past where you want (for example - include Sketch3 and then use a workplane or some other Split method to trim back the solid before Deleting the face and Patching. You can eliminate the Delete face step in some cases by modeling a surfaces to begin with.
JD,
I have Matt Lombard's book on surfacing for SW. Is there a simular book for Inventor that yu would reccomend? I am also wondering about a more advanced book for modeling that would cover Ilogic, factorys, and APis in more detail than the inital Essentials book does?
Thank you
@JimSteinmeyer wrote:JD,
I have Matt Lombard's book on surfacing for SW. Is there a simular book for Inventor ...
I have not seen a book on the topic, just bit-and-pieces. Fortunately most of the functionality is identical to SWx.
Matt's book and Ed Eaton's Curvy Stuff tutorials are what I used (and an old MDT surfacing book) to learn surfacing in Inventor.
I would attempt a book on the topic myself, but all the information that I can gather indicates that it would not be worth my time in terms of remuneration. Also, I am a bit disappointed with Autodesk putting trivial pieces of Alias edit tools in that Inventor Fusion (which shouldn't exist as product). If they had done it correctly - Inventor would have really outpaced SWx.
Thank you. I will just pull out Matt's book and brush up. I recieved a baptism by fire with surfacing in SWx when my last company contracted a couple of guys to give us models for body panels on our product that had never had body panels before. I was given some Alias files and told to make'em work. Such fun for someone who had never considered surfacing before.
That looks great, JD. I've had to switch gears to another project, but soon as I get a chance, I will use your solution (the second one- Tangent boundary patch).