Making objects from sketches?

[Anonymous]

Hi,

I am new to autoCAD and am working on a project where I am building an air passage interface between two engine components. I photocopied both the opposing surfaces to use as a canvas, and loaded them into Fusion 360. (This is a classic round peg in a square whole project, no moving parts).

I then used the sketch functions to trace the areas that I need, yet I cannot manipulate or compress the connected components of my sketch to make them into one object. Simply put, if I were making a square, I have four independent lines; and I don't know how to compress them into one square to be manipulated! (my object is much more complex than a square... you can see below what I mean)

I cannot protrude solid components from the sketch so as to make them anything useful. The basic gist is to make a plate with the holes for bolts and air passages. Any help would be very much appreciated! The object I am making cannot be easily rendered from basic shapes (and I don't imagine the software would be so dense as to not allow someone to make shapes from geometric sketches, unless I'm mistaken?). Here's where I am:

 Thank you for your comments ahead of time. This software is so powerful, I hope I can learn to use it well!

Dan

[Oceanconcepts]

Hi Dan,

Your sketch has gaps in it that prevent it from turning into a profile. To do what you want the sketch needs to be a completely closed set of curves. This will be obvious by the “fill” color that is applied. See this sketch of some walls:

You could work around your profile with the Extend tool to cause lines to extend to the next sketch entity- zooming in might be very helpful there. And you can select the appropriate constraints, such as coincident, from the sketch menu- click the constraint, then the entities you want to constrain to each other. You would probably benefit from applying perpendicular constraints to some lines, just to make sure that you have things in exact orientation. 

Personally I would delete the corner fillets, and just draw in the straight lines until I had a closed profile, then add fillets with the fillet tool to make the small curves. Or even wait until I had a solid and add the fillets then. Start with the most primitive shape that captures the important dimensions and get a closed profile, then add refinements. You can over build the lines, then use the trim tool to cut them back to exact intersections. If you know exact dimensions, you can add sketch dimensions to control exact positioning. Basic issue is, the lines all need to meet up exactly.

[HughesTooling]

If you look at post #8 in this thread I've shown a way to find gaps in sketches.

 Open Sketch

Also there's a sketch checker here Sketch Checker

Mark

[Oceanconcepts]

That is a great technique, one I will definitely use. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone -- I found the gaps!