Loft Question?

[SteveFrey]

I'm not sure if this is a Loft question or if it fall under another category.  Anyway, attached is a picture of a piece of 1/2" electrical conduit that was squeezed in a vise so the walls are almost touching.  How would I draw this in Inventor?  I was thinking draw the conduit then sketch the "squeezed" shape on a work plane 3/4" away from one of the ends the tube.  I tried this but couldn't get them to join.  Am I going about this the right way? 

The tube will have a 45° bend in it before the end gets deformed.  Maybe this will change the way I should be attempting this.

This reminds me of one of those textbook excercises where you have to cut away a portion of a sphere, etc.  LOL.

[rdyson]

Create a bent rod, loft from the end to the oval, extrude the oval the appropriate length then shell to the wall thickness. Use the rod end surface for the loft so you can control the tangency of the loft.

[Curtis_Waguespack]

Hi SteveFrey,

Attached is an example to look at. You'll likely want to adjust the Conditions of the loft to get the squeeze to look correct. Note in the attached example, that I constrained the squeezed end profile to match the diameter by making it tangent, but you might want to make it wider than the diameter to be more accurate.

I hope this helps.
Best of luck to you in all of your Inventor pursuits,
Curtis
http://inventortrenches.blogspot.com

[SteveFrey]

Thanks, but can you explain in a little more detail? 

[JDMather]

The usual - what version of Inventor are you using?  (you could put this information in your signature)

If you are using 2013 I can post an example.

[SteveFrey]

2013 Professional

[rdyson]

I thought I was pretty clear 🙂

[JDMather]

I didn't take the time to get this perfect, but this example (done in student version) should get you closer.

Examine and then delete.

Sometimes you can do as a single lofted solid feature and Shell, other times shell fails and this general solution (or an adaptation) must be used. 

Edit

I see Ray has posted a good solution.

[swhite]

Loft and shell works.

[SteveFrey]

It probably was very clear and I thank you.  Unfortunately to the novice it seems complex.  I've never come across a loft in what I use Inventor for.  This is why I need training wheels.  Sheet metal is foreign to me as well. 

I design custom shower doors so most of what I do is right angles and miters, etc..  Maybe once a year I get a rounded unit but they usually don't go past the quote process.  It's not that I don't want to know it all; I just don't have the resources to learn all of it. 

Without you great people I'd be stuck a lot more or the company would be spending a lot of money for custom training.  Thanks again!  Much appreciated.

[SteveFrey]

I will take a look. Thanks again.

[JDMather]

As you experiment with Loft go through all the options in the dialog box.

Notice on the file swhite posted it might be a better model if the Conditions was set to tangent.

That is why Ray set to loft from solid-to-solid (Edges), you can then set Conditions - Tangent on both ends of the loft.  If you loft to a sketch you do not have this function.