Problems with 3d sketching and lofting

[jandyman]

I'm afraid this is going to appear to be a bit of a newbie question, even though I've spent quite a bit of time with Fusion 360. I'm trying to internalize and adapt the results of a very good Fusion 360 tutorial I found on youtube for creating a guitar neck model. It exposed me to many Fusion 360 concepts I was not familiar with. Using the surface toolkit as opposed to simple sketches and solids, the idea of "3d sketches". But I got very stuck trying to follow the tutorial at a certain point, especially because I necessarily had a different starting point. The tutorial is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIykjXXJDhs&t=816s

I got stuck at 15:11 in the video. I could not get my splines to snap to the points in question. Here is my model at that point in time:

https://a360.co/31ozd4d

I would appreciate any help in understanding why the tutorial presenter can select the points in question as a spline starting point, while I cannot. I get that I've not projected the string lines, but that is not the point I'm having trouble with. I can't select the "corners". I'd also like to get a deeper understanding of conversion between solids and surfaces, stitching of surfaces, etc. This whole world of building solids out of linked surfaces is new to me.

Thanks for any help!

- Andy

[davebYYPCU]

I had not seen that video before, could be the Loft tool has been updated since then.

He is snapping to the end points of projected sketch lines, you say you haven't done that (yet).

While I wait for the download, 

Fusion sketching works best when snapping to articles that are in that sketch, and is less than efficient snapping to external articles, tries hard, looks ok, but rarely gets it right.  He uses one 3d sketch to bridge the neck's gap, with splines.  When he goes along to make the tangent profiles on one end, that capability is now contained within the Loft tool.

Surfaces have no thickness, when a series of surfaces with common edges exist, they can be stitched to become one surface, if that new surface is fully enclosing a space, then the system converts that space to be a solid body. 

Might help....

[davebYYPCU · Accepted solution]

As I thought, your Loft works with his Loft rails selected as profiles.  (Body edges - not sketches)

Make the Tangent G1 change, 

Might help...

[jandyman · Accepted solution]

Those are all helpful comments. I don't think it explains why he is able to select that one "corner" as the start point for a spline at exactly 15:11 in the video. That point is an external point to that sketch as far as I can tell.

Note the point I'm talking about is not one of the string projection points. 

I obviously haven't tried creating "string lines" to project and see if I can attach a spline endpoint to one of those other spots he attaches to slightly afterwards.

I'm still mystified by that.

The alternate loft solution works pretty well! 

[laughingcreek · Accepted solution]

In your preferences, do yo have "allow 3d sketching of lines" checked?

[jandyman]

Yep, that is it for that problem (selecting point in 3d sketch)

[jandyman]

Dang it. I got that simplified loft to work, got two more hours of work done, then Fusion 360 crashed, and a slip of the mouse deleted the autorecovery file. Now I'm trying to redo that simpler loft, and for the life of me I can't seem to select those two profiles as profiles. What am I doing wrong? I managed to fumble into it before, but I can't seem to recreate the magic that allowed me to select those profiles. Quite frustrated at the moment ...

[jandyman]

Never mind, I went back and deleted some previous timeline stuff, redid it, and now it works. Wish I understood the complexities of selection better.