Is is possible to create a coil around a lofted shape?
Creating coils around a lot I can imagine, even though the coil tool is rather limited. However if that loft follows a spline I don;t see myself doing that with Fusion 360.
The question is wheter this is just a modeling exercise or f some physical end product is deserted and with what features.
The shape you are describing I'd likely do in Blender. If it then needs to be in Fusion it could be exported as a .obj file, imported into Fusion 360 and converted into a T-Spline.
Accepted solution
I made this by creating a 3D sketch using the spline tool, and clicking on the t-spline curve intersections. The t-spline object was made by lofting with a lot of subdivisions up the length (I used 100) but only use 4 subdivisions around the body. Once the sketch was complete and end profiles added, the solid loft tool was used to get this result:
Ok, I did everything like you said. But for some reason the second loft that twist around the first still is intersecting. You can see the second one pierce through the first. Your version looks like it perfectly wraps all the way around. What am I doing wrong?
From your image, it looks like you didn't create a construction plane at the end of the path. Then create a sketch on the plane and a circle who's center is the end-point of the spline.
I always wondered how do this (see image below): It was done by tracing a 3D spline around a T-spline cylinder that had a lot of subdivisions in it's length ( 8 divisions between each coil revolution and 8 subdivisions around the cylinder). 'Edit Form' was used on the cylinder to do a scale with soft modification enabled. The resulting tapered cylinder was sightly bowed but I used it to draw the 3D spline. Next, a close fitting tapered cylinder was placed inside the 3D spline. The 3D spline was then 'projected to the surface' of the tapered cylinder using 'closest point'.
I created the loft in the usual way.
I can hardly believe this has not received more Kudos.
@donsmac again you've shown that you are a master of innovative workflows and how to do it in Fusion 360 anyway!
Using a T-Spline loft basically as a 3d canvas or grid to create a 3D spine is such a brilliant idea!
Thanks Trip 😉
I've explored this idea further. I'll post some results later. I agree, using a T-Spline body as a 3-D grid for a 3-D sketch is an interesting idea, especially when using soft modification, scale and twist (soft mod rotate) on the T-spline body. Curves can be extracted directly from the T-spline object in addition to adding 3-D spline sketch curves to it.
Just want to add a step to this idea: when the 3-D spline is wrapped around a T-spline form it may not touch the surface in places, so if that T-spline body is part of model as in the original post, then project the curve to the surface (using closest point) after converting the T-spline Body to a solid.
Below are two examples of using the same T-spline cylinder that had soft modification (rotation and scale), applied. The spirals are are result of the soft rotation, I did not add them. I did add the vertical 3-D curves on the cage model.
The first example shows a cage that has t-spline pipes made from the splines,
and the second example shows a spiral made by lofting ( in patch mode ) a center line to a spiral curve. The result was then thickened and pattern rotated.
Hi bmagras2016
Sorry for the late reply, here's a screencast showing how this piece was done.
Although I've had success creating the loft that follows a curve that was projected to a surface, in this case it failed after a couple of attempts, so this video shows the work around (sorry for the length).
