Any conceptual advice on making complex projects like this?

[MichaelSGao]

I have been trying out Fusion 360 for months. After reviewing many tutorial videos and books I still can´t finish a complex design with efficiency. After hours of working, this gadget is what I´ve got... Getting the inner void space created is kind of frustrating. 

I had to create so many planes and draw so many sketches to use as references. So many intersections and projects were created and the design was just a mess. Can anyone help me with this specific case? And can anyone give me some conceptual advice on the workflow/routine?

[MichaelSGao]

Some specific questions:

• Is it a good practice to use the "loft" to create internal void spaces? (From my experience, performing a cut using "extrude" and "sweep" is only useful for cases in which the ending profiles have the same dimension.)
• While drawing guide rails (excluding centerlines) for a "loft", I have difficulty making them intersect the profiles when they are geometries with smooth curvatures, like circles. Even though I have checked "include 3D geometries", I still can´t make the rail sketches connect with the circles. 

[davebYYPCU · Accepted solution]

Loft is usually required when traversing from other known profiles.  Step up the timeline, used most of the modelling tools in this one.

Project > Intersect, for planar sketches, invaluable.

How to do one like this, you have a canvass, used it as a basis, you get most details from the canvass, but your base sketch was not near scale so was ignored.  Add proper dimensions, for your project, threads were ignored in my model as my sizes are unlikely correct, and you can follow on with those.

Might help....

[laughingcreek]

ah, late to the game.  i'll post anyway incase it gives you some ideas-

[MichaelSGao]

@davebYYPCU

Thank you very much for setting this example. Your approach gave me another perspective on how to handle this type of problems. I´ve somehow neglected the power of "sweep", "split", and some other commands.

@laughingcreek 

Thanks a lot! It helped, your solution is more understandable.

[laughingcreek]

I'm curious if this item already exists, and how the internal voids are made.