Issues Making a Female Mold - Building a Canoe Mold

[Anonymous]

I am currently working on a canoe mold that is going to be used for next year's ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition. I have some knowledge of using Autodesk Inventor since I used it in high school. However, it is my first time using it to potentially make a product out of this software. I have the general shape of the cross section I want an want to make a female mold out of this cross section. However, I am not sure if I am using the right commands for this project. Attached is my .ipt file for the cross section with dimensions.

What I had in mind was making a loft for the general shell of the canoe and then possibly extrude that to make a rectangular mold for a cross section and make a female mold. A major concern I see is that I was trying to go for a tumblehome for the canoe and it may cause problems for the manufacturer to make the mold.

Thanks for the help.

[Anonymous]

I finally was able to get the shape of the canoe that I wanted. It is much smoother than the original model I made, but it isn't perfect. A little sanding will do the trick.

However, I'm back to square one in terms of the deriving the component. Like mentioned earlier, I followed the instructions from that link I posted. Unfortunately, that did not work. However, when I tried to cut into the foam block I made, the model was gone, which is good. However it does this:

The red area indicates that there is nothing there. However, there is foam in the inside of the ship and I would just like to get that out so I can have a pure female mold. 

I was thinking, should I make a model where it is not hollow to fit passengers to subtract it from the foam block I made instead of using the canoe model I have to derive?

[LT.Rusty]

That would be one way to do it, yes.

[Anonymous]

Also, would the sculpt function work as well when it comes to making a female mold? I was looking into that and it seems like a possible solution.

[Anonymous]

After much tinkering around, I finally got what I wanted. I was able to create a female and even a male mold just in case for our competition.

The sculpt command really did the trick. Thank you so much, LT.Rusty for all your help and your patience! You definitely helped me get to speed on how to use Inventor for this project and I really cannot thank you enough.

[LT.Rusty]

Happy to help!

Good to see you got what you needed finally. The stuff that you learned here will be useful for future projects as well.

[Anonymous]

I'm back at it again trying to make a different mold design since my professor was concerned about the constructability of the canoe. So this time we went with a flared cross section. However, during the process of making the surface using the loft command it failed to make a loft. I tried to see what was wrong and it appears that the rails are not connected. But, I am having a hard time figuring out which sketch is causing the problem.

Here is a screecast of my issue with audio: