I'm trying to model a wire that is bent into a coil at one end. In the screen shot below you can see I have created a coil and a pipe as 2 separate bodies and now I want to join them by connecting/lofting between the highlighted faces. The connection needs to be smooth like a spline to continue the flow of the wire. I can't sketch a spline between the two faces easily because they don't align on a 2d plane. How would one make this connection successfully? Thanks.
Lofting between a pipe and a coil
Use Loft between 2 ends and just set "Tangent" attribute for both profiles in Loft dialog window. Also you can play with Tangency weight.
That's very close to what I need, but when I do it the connection does not maintain the round profile. I'll upload my .f3d
Then you have to draw 3d-spline touching both ends and use it as a center line for Loft operation. the result is attached.
Thanks grandag. That method is the best option I have so far. Annoyingly even with the tangent constraints on the sketch the transition is not totally smooth and you get a visible kink where the two bodies meet (see below). Perhaps there is a better approach than creating the coil and the pipe as separate bodies and trying to link them?
Thanks grandag. Sweeping does make it a little smoother although still not perfect. This works for me but I still feel like perhaps I'm approaching this the wrong way. By creating the coil and the pipe and joining them this way the design intent is not captured well. For instance, if I adjust the diameter of the coil feature then nothing lines up (see bellow). It doesn't feel like a good way to model a single wire that is bent into a complex shape.
