Automatic lofting: what drives it?

[mbraun]

I have to loft a lot of complex profiles and the automatic lofting rarely works and I have to manually put in the match lines on a regular basis. I see that the automatic lofting appears to match endpoint to endpoint from one profile to the next. If the automatic lofting had the option of either matching end point to end point or end point to shortest possible distance to the next profile, I feel like it would be able to automatically loft on a more consistent basis. 

[JDMather]

Adding Rails can improve this.

[CCarreiras]

Hi!

I don't know what drives it, but you can always add points to the sketches and edit/force the "match lines" to cross where you need.

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[mbraun]

Both of those suggestions sound more time consuming than just matching up the profiles, to add a rail i would need to create another profile. If i took the time to add points, why not just manually match it up anyways.  

[JDMather]

Attach your ipt file here.

[mbraun]

I can't due to confidentiality. I'll try to come up with something similar and post back.

[mbraun]

Here is a really basic example. I would have to go in and edit how those profiles are matching based on how the automatic matching performed. 

[JDMather]

First thing I noticed is no Tangent constraints on sketches.

For something this simple I would create one feature (for each unique feature) and Circular Pattern rather than a map so many sketch points.

[rmerlob]

JD´s answer seemed pretty straight forward at first but after sketching it out parametrically I realized that you still had to do a couple of shenanigans because inventor wont loft area to curve, plus I still had to do tons of mapping (difference is i did it with rails cause its easier to select the exact points I wanted.

I think it´s an overall much better way to build the model but the OP´s original point still stands, these kinds of parts require lots of mapping.

I do not know if other software would fare much better though.

mbraun: I dont know if you know this but modeling it this way (fully constrained and dimensioned sketches + using simmetry at a feature level) makes it much easier when the design changes, notice how you can change most or all the dimensions and have the part model correctly.

Regards,

RM