adding a spine/ridge to an irregular and curved body

[screwyluie]

so I have an irregular object/body and the key to my issue is that it's not planar, it's curved. I want to add a spine to it like you would see on carved filigree. I've been at this for hours and tried many things and so far I can't figure it out. Ideally I'd like to draw the ridge with splines either on the surface and offset to the right height for the peak or I could do it manually at the proper height with a 3d sketch and then deform the face to touch the sketch. Loft seems like the right tool but I can't for the life of me get it to work the way I want.

help?

[davebYYPCU]

Quick answer, just finished making this for another thread,

if you change to join the red outline would be added to the base,

so it might work with the sweep, shape adapted, use a 3d sketch

Project > Include 3d Geometry as the path,

depending on the shape, you may have to do it in sections.

[TrippyLighting]

Can you share your model ?

You might need to create a number of surface lofts in the Patch workspace between the outer edges of the piece and the ridge splines.

[screwyluie]

@davebYYPCU I'll give that a try and see if I can work something out.

@TrippyLighting how? even in the patch space I can't do what you said. I can select the face and the spline but there's no way to get that to work... at least not that I can see. I don't mind sharing the model, what format would you like it in? I typically just make STL's but I don't think that's what you want?

[TrippyLighting]

You can either share a linkt to the model fom the data panel in Fusion 360 or export your design as a.f3d file (Fusion 360 native). and attahc it to your next post.

[screwyluie]

learn something new every day I say. Let's see if I got this right: http://a360.co/2pSainr

[screwyluie]

@davebYYPCU so I'm trying the sweep idea and while it does offer the ability to get that swept ridge line look, it's very clumsy for this object because of the varied distance to the center line, getting multiple sketches to line up just perfectly on either side to make a sharp ridge, over any distance is almost impossible because it doesn't seem to follow the line perfectly... it's almost like it moves in a spline where the shape between two points varies depending on the next point in line if that makes sense. if I could lock it down to strictly follow the splines I've setup as the ridge line then I think I could get this to work.

ok forgot my splines were off the face.... fixed that... continuing testing.

[TrippyLighting]

Is this the sort of thing you are look g for ?

[screwyluie]

That is remarkably close to it, yes. How did you do that?

[screwyluie]

@TrippyLighting not to be a bother but I'm itchin to know how you did that. Thanks.

[SaeedHamza]

@TrippyLighting I think sweep or loft tool can achieve this, I was going to make a screencast but I thought I should ask you first

how did you exactly achieve it?

Best regards, Saeed

[TrippyLighting · Accepted solution]

This type of problem comes up every now and then. Last time was the Skyrim logo a few weeks back>. I used the same techniques, surface loft in this case, but this work also well with patches instead of lofts.

[SaeedHamza]

@TrippyLighting

This is what I meant by using loft, to get that dragon head for example

[screwyluie]

@TrippyLighting

this just reinforces my need to get into the patch mode and learn what it can do.

Thanks for the help, if you look at the link again you'll see an updated version with the new lofts.. I still have some tweaking to do to get the exact shapes that I need but the basic idea is there. I think I got it from here, thanks again.