Projected sketch lines not creating a closed loop.

[alexanderteittinen]

Im projecting a sketch on to a contoured surface with varying bends. Depening on the angle of the plane I select to project or how many rails I decide to include on my contour,  I either receive a project to surface failure of variable sketch lines or the sketch does not meet coincident points on the projection where it certainly does on the source sketch. 

Ultimately im trying to patch the projected profile and thicken it into a 3d body that follows the contour. So far even completing the loop manually via the editing the projected sketch still wont make the "ok" button on the patch feature light up. 

Here is a link: http://a360.co/1N2tgl4 - The "Bootkicker sketch" component is the desired sketch to project and the "Belly pan" under bodies is the contour to project to.

Any insights or alternate methods would be greatly appreciated. 

[innovatenate · Accepted solution]

Are you using the project along vector command? If you use the project along vector and the vector is the normal to the 2D sketch plane, then I'm not sure how it the loop wouldn't be connected. I've seen a few scenarios where the projected sketch becomes discontinous when projecting to the closest point or to an odd vector. 

One thing you may be able to do instead is use the trim command. Check out the below screencasts for more detail.

I hope that helps.

[alexanderteittinen]

Thanks for the response! I was using the closest point projection and sounds like that was my problem.

The project along vector certainly made the difference. From there I trimmed the rest of the body off to get the desired shape. Is there any method of keeping the tool body when trimming in the PATCH workspace? It would be nice for a reference. Otherwise this helped a lot. Thank you.